The real story:
How Milosevic was much more evil
than you ever knew
By
Jan Oberg, TFF director
Lund, Sweden - March 12-13, 2006

Here at his death, I think CNN, BBC and all the rest paint a much too flattering picture of Slobodan Milosevic. OK, they say that he was the butcher of the Balkans and that he was widely regarded as the architect of the Balkans carnage. CNN points out that he was responsible for 170.000 dead in Croatia, 250.000 in Bosnia, for the misery of today's Serbia and for the 800.000 refugees running when NATO began bombing Kosovo in early 1999. And, yes, Sweden's radio listeners were informed about a dozen of times that he started four wars and lost them.

All fine and good and true too, as you will see - but they never explain to us how he actually did it all.

I still think these excellent media people should offer the world some background to this Hitler replica instead of just sounding as if they were sour because he did not grant them the scoop interview they hoped for back then.

I think his death is the right moment to tell you how I believe he, he alone, caused all the troubles. The evil of Milosevic is grossly understated by Western politicians, diplomats and media, even by the millions and millions whose lives he single-handedly ruined. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that he can be tied also to the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi.

I know a bit about it because I met him eye to eye in 1995 and I've been in and out of former Yugoslavia some 80 times since 1974 first as a student, then as a conflict analyst and I have served as conflict-mitigator to Milan Panic's various ministers - Panic and President Cosic were the alternatives to Milosevic in the early 1990s. And, for four year I was a goodwill advisor to another dead President, Dr. Rugova of Kosovo. So, I've been a witness. I can no longer keep silent.

Here is what my personal experience and objective research lead me to believe is the well-documented truth about him.


How Milosevic destroyed the YU economy

It was already in the early 1970s, at the age of 30, that Slobo started working on his devilish plan: to destroy old Yugoslavia in order to build a new Greater Serbia. He began working secretly with Western transnational corporations - remember he was trained in financial affairs through his relations with the Rockefeller family and knew how to exploit its network. At his advice they closed down their shipbuilding, textile, military, electronics and car industries in YU and set up shop instead in low-wage countries in Asia. "Destroy the industrial base and everything else will fall," muttered this sly Marxist Communist to himself. The oil crisis that happened simultaneously was like a God-sent gift; he became director of a gas company in 1973.

Signs of economic crisis soon surfaced and YU ran into debt for the first time. So, while in the U.S., Slobo made friends with people in the IMF and the World Bank who agreed to come over and advise the unsuspecting politicians in YU. Little did they know who Slobo-the-Trickster was and how his inviting these great aid organizations was meant to cause disaster. The IMF and the World Bank ordered immediate privatisation, structural adjustment and they told YU not to have an ethnically balanced National Bank board.

Sooner rather than later, unemployment rose immediately to 40-60 percent here and there; the YU economy went further down the drain, inequality rose, and so did the foreign debt, and people began to see "the others" as the main cause of their deepening daily misery. He masterminded this economic destruction hiding as leader of a Belgrade bank between 1978 and 1983.

Then Tito died, what a chance! Having set in motion the destruction of YU's economy Slobo now turns to his political destruction. Ruthlessly - what did you expect? - he begins to manipulate Serbia's Communist Party from 1982.

If you are a nationalist and want a Greater Serbia all over the place, the old thing has to die first and be reborn in a new shape. That's also how he thought he would become a Saviour and so he builds his plan with good-hearted allies who just don't see the intrigue and stab-in-the-back drama he is directing. His manoeuvring leads to enormous socio-economic disparities. He knows how to play on the traumas of WW 2 that Tito had swept under the carpet.

How he made the Slovenes and Croats nationalists

Slovenia is just a detail, a stepping stone to invading Croatia. You may have heard that Alois Mock, Austria's foreign minister, argued his best to get YU divided. That's not true, of course, it's just a nasty rumour. In fact he supported the U.S. at the time which argued for YU remaining a unified country. This irritated Slobo so much that he went straight for a military solution. With quite some sadism, he deliberately chose to send a Slovene general from the YU Army, JNA, to simply invade his own country.

No one understood why, because the Slovenes wanted so much to stay in YU. But as my analysis show, Slobo needed to destroy it all to build a new Greater Serbia. So he pretended that the JNA was the Army of all YU and that it's job was to hold the country together. In reality, he used JNA to split and ravage it, saying one thing and doing the opposite while baselessly accusing Mock and the Slovenes of conspiracy against the State. Well, that invasion was anyhow a nice little tea party so let's move on.

He calls up his friend Franjo Tudjman in Zagreb and suggests that he declare Croatia independent and begin to import weapons illegally. "You see, Franjo, I know from your participation in the nationalist Croatian Spring in the early 1970s that we can work together," he argues. "Don't worry about the Constitution, just go for independence. Use the memory of the old-fashioned Serbs over there and clamp down on them as much as you please. Your Croats will love you for it and it'll give me a pretext to start a war on behalf of all Serbs. I'll let you win it later, I promise, but it will make me a hero too that I tried!

This was an offer Tudjman could not refuse. As a typical Western democrat who had no trace of East European authoritarianism - he was a good Catholic too - he loathed any type of nationalism and personality cult. But he had a little weak spot and thought he could go along with it for a short while, much against his principles of course. So he invents a nationalist and semi-fascist rhetoric that scares the hell out of Croatia's Serbs - and sends his interior minister on a shopping tour to Western arms dealers. Poor Franjo doesn't see that he is just a pawn in Slobo's sinister game, of course.

Then he gets the EU to recognise Croatia and Slovenia

Slobo keeps at least part of his promise to Franjo. Always ahead of the rest, he begins to persuade the EU to recognize Croatia and Slovenia before they have the faintest understanding of YU as such or the faintest idea about what to do with the rest of YU. He knew Franjo would love him for it. What he also knew was that that would lead to war in Bosnia. Here is how he did it.
Slobo contacts Germany's foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and tells him that he ought to spearhead Croatia's independence in the EU. "We'll share it without consulting Franjo," says Slobo the fox. "You get the coast for your German tourists, I make a contiguous Greater Serbia where the Serbs live. Step two, dear Hans-Dietrich, is that you and I know that that move will make life impossible for Alija Izetbegovic, but you don't like Muslims anyhow, do you? Tudjman is a fool and he will probably try to get control over those parts of Bosnia where Croats live. See - what an arms sales potential for you, other EU countries and the U.S.! And while Tudjman falls into our Bosnian trap, I take Vukovar behind his back and you turn a blind eye; to him half of Bosnia is much more important than Eastern Slavonia. Keine Hexeri and Nema problema!"

Genscher was very interested in that coast, as was his predecessor Klaus Kinkel who, before serving as foreign minister, had headed the West German intelligence service, BND. And Slobo knew how to appeal to the old German-Croatian ties during the 2nd World War. Genscher's united Germany could need that coast and a divided YU.

Perhaps more important, he hoped that the EU could run this backyard so the Americans didn't get there. It was time for big thinking now the Soviet Union had fallen apart and Europe - Maastricht Europe - was on the move under what he hoped would be German leadership.

YU didn't fit, could not be neutral and certainly not orthodox and socialist. It had to be changed and take part in Western globalisation. Good to have at least some of it linked to Germany and the Vatican.

Slobo almost overdid it when he said that "After all, you know, we Serbs and you Germans can work together. But don't listen to Lord Carrington or to UN's Butros-Ghali and please don't listen to your Ambassador here in Belgrade. I know they all tell you not to recognise Slovenia and Croatia. Just don't listen to them. They are Yugo-nostalgics. Both Serbs and Germans can play a new role in new Europe, can't you see?

The otherwise most experienced Genscher here met his Waterloo or Sloboloo. He was too good for this eloquent but cunning Balkan dictator and didn't understand that Slobo only used him too: Start wars here and there, lose some and gain some, play one European against another (France/Britain), and all of Europe against the U.S. - what a strategist he was at a time when Europeans focused on the huge changes under Gorbachev and the fall of the Wall and turned their backs to the Balkans!

Slobo was a Master in teasing and timing. Genscher fell for him. And later he fell also as a Foreign Minister.

So, in that fateful December night in 1991, the EU - totally innocent as it were - carried out Slobo's plan with the naïve Genscher as its agent. It recognized Croatia and Slovenia and thus served Slobo, on a silver plate, the third war he had already fomented in his sick mind: the war in Bosnia.


How Slobo orchestrated the killing of at least 250.000 in Bosnia

I think we begin to see the basic element in Milosevic' perverse tactics. Tell the others to seek independence, get nationalist and go for Greater Slovenia, Greater Croatia, Greater Bosnia, Greater Albania, etc. When they do, he gets a pretext for invading them, smash them up and take their land and - Keine Hexerei - there it is: Greater Serbia! None of the others actually wanted any of it, but he seduced them, one by one!

Bosnia's Muslim leader, Alija - a good-hearted fundamentalist - was the next to be lead by the nose. Slobo asked him for a little favour that could serve as a pretext for invading Bosnia too. He would then help Alija, the ever non-decisive, to get his desired Muslim Bosnia.

"Alija, if we cooperate, you'll get much more than 43% of the territory for your 43% Muslims. Let's ethnically cleanse the Bosnian Croats out to the coast into the water or whatever, and then we share the rest of Bosnia as long as I get more than 33% for my Serb people. The best way you can get a strong Muslim foothold there is to build an Army but you can only do that if I have first made a few attacks with the YU Army - JNA you know - parts of which have always been in Bosnia. I'll give you all the Muslims in it and send you some of my Sandjak Muslims here in Serbia; then you call up your Al-Queda friends and build an army for your new Bosnia.

All I need, God willing I beg with your help Alija, is that you treat my Bosnian Serb countrymen really badly. Please make some attempts on the life of this mad psychiatrist Karadzic and chase him out of his party office and home in Sarajevo with drunkard Ratko Whateverishisname. Secondly, hold a referendum on independence that looks democratic in Western eyes, and don't worry that your Serbs wont participate. That helps me too.

Soon you'll declare Bosnia independent and both your Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats will go mad. That's when you'll need an Army. You can get some of the JNA arms but tell Clinton and Albright that you are defenceless against my troops. After Kuwait they need to show Muslims some goodwill.

By the way, you'll become a national hero too among your Bosniaks. Just send Karadzic and the others running to me and I'll guarantee you that they wont bother you ever again!"

He knew of course he was lying.

Izetbegovic who had been in Tito's prison for his books about Islam-run states across the world felt happy at this prospect. But what this poor man didn't understand was that Tudjman was already planning to send his Croats over the border and carve up Bosnia and that Milosevic wouldn't keep one single of his words. Instead he would get his Greater Serbia in the major parts of Bosnia.

Genius as he was, Slobo actually told EU ambassadors that it would be great if the EU chose to recognize Bosnia as an independent state on April 6, 1992 - saying to the Germans that they could quite fitting celebrate Hitler's destruction of Yugoslavia 51 years earlier - in 1941 when, by the way, little Slobo had been born.

This was a recipe for making the Serbs in Bosnia go mad, because they didn't want that independent Bosnia, neither to be reminded by Germans about Hitler's destruction of their country. So, just humiliate them on that very day, Slobo begged - then they will come to me for protection. Naturally, he did not tell Alija that he had already encouraged Franjo to invade Bosnia north, west and south down to Mostar.

This is how Slobo callously cheated Alija and staged the wars and the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps etc. in Bosnia that killed a quarter of a million, including the 8.000 in Srebrenica. It's the favourite story and undisputed figure presented by CNN's Senior Reporter, Christiane Armanpour - and therefore by everybody else considered the truth about Bosnia. And it is. I am only explaining how Slobo was alone behind it all, while CNN only tells us that he was.

It's hard to understand but no one seemed at the time to have a clue about the games Slobo was playing with one innocent player after the other.

Here is what CNN, Holbrooke and all the rest never really tell us but what I am telling you now: how this evil man - the Father of all Evil as his fellow dictator Saddam would probably have said -made moves that started the war in Croatia only to open the next one in Bosnia.

While the international community, i.e. Clinton and a Blair and a handful more, were all engaged in Croatia and Bosnia, Slobo was already conspiring against the Albanians.

All his counterparts in YU and the international community was just pawns on his chess board. Alija ran around in camouflage outfit and was eventually forced to run not one or two wars but three wars that he had never wanted!

These wars were against the Bosnian Serbs, a year against the peace-loving Croats in Hercegovina/Herceg Bosna and Tudjman's troops from Zagreb and, finally, with his own Muslims in the Bihac pocket (that slimy Fikhret Abdic who'd been a business man in Belgrade..) - all because Slobo had given him a offer he found too good to refuse at the time. This man of peace deeply regretted that he ever listened to Slobo and then had to fight all these wars when in fact he would just have loved to sit reading religious books in between prayers.

Next, Kosovo…

Then there were the Western oriented, peace-loving Albanians in Serbia's southern province. Slobo had a more serious problem here: how would he force them into submission when they had absolutely no intention of independence and thus could not be expected to follow in the footsteps of Franjo and Alija?

Even worse, how could he make a deal with their leader, Dr. Rugova who was much too decent to go shopping for weapons abroad and was a man of literature from Sorbonne?

Slobo's manipulative creativity knew no boundaries. He did three things to keep Kosovo inside Greater Serbia - well, it was an integral part of Serbia already. Puffing his cigar, he took away the province's autonomy by decree, because: who were they and who had Tito been to think that it was right that the Albanians had their own local government in Pristina and - together with the other autonomous province in Voivodina - would be able to block any decision in the Serbian parliament? Who had this half-Croat Tito been who thought that Serbia should not be a master in its own house? No way, it wasn't right!

After all, Slobo thought by himself, Serbia is the most multi-ethnic republic (another lie of course in this perverted nationalist's foggy mind) so why should they have special rights that we Serbs don't enjoy anywhere?

And of course he knew full well that the otherwise loyal and never-ever complaining Kosovars would go bananas if he humiliated them by taking their special status away and they would enjoy the same rights like everybody else in Serbia or YU for that matter.

Secondly, around 1993 he began to pay a few murky extremist Kosovo-Albanian guys a lot of money for starting the UCK or the Kosovo-Albanian Liberation Army, KLA. The German Secret Service and later CIA thought it was a good idea to militarize the whole place, because then they could export arms to Kosovo - which this weird Rugova, the pacifist, would not even be able to think of.

Although there were no nationalists or separatist in Kosovo, Milosevic calculated that if KLA got strong enough and could intimidate their softer Kosovo-Albanians fellows and he then - naturally - stepped up his police-state control of the province, there would soon be quite a few who would cry out for separation and independence. So did Rugova predictably shortly after, but independence through war was much better for all than independence through non-violence, wasn't it?

In passing, let me illustrate how Slobo also made mistakes. Among those he paid to kill Serbs were Albanians such as Ramush Haradinaj, Hacim Thaci and Agim Ceku. A good decade later he meets Haradinaj in the Hague, also indicted like himself for war crimes. The difference? Haradinaj was allowed by the Hague Tribunal to go back to Kosovo and participate in politics; nothing like that was granted Slobo, not even health care in Moscow.

And only a few days before Slobo died, darling of the West, Agim Ceku became Prime Minister of Kosovo - rewarded for his bravery in driving out Serbs from Croatia in 1995 and Serbs from Kosovo in 1999 in the wake of NATO's destruction, a good 400.000 all in all. What an irony - but it's only fair that the West accept Albanian reverse ethnic cleansing in the light of Milosevic's incredible cruelty.

Here is his calculation from the early 1990s. When it would get really hot down in Kosovo, he would show his military strength and drive the Albanians out: Lebensraum in all of Kosovo for his Serbs, the cradle of Serbian culture (pure propaganda).

What I hope to have explained to you now is how Slobo was the man who created Albanian nationalism, separatism and militarism. KLA's activities and killing of Serbs would then serve as a pretext for him to intervene and wipe them all out or kill them, 1,5 million. And have no doubt, he had the Horseshoe Plan (Clinton said he had and thus it must be true, because Clinton never lied). If Slobo had concentration camps in Bosnia, why should he not also want to exterminate 1,5 million Albanians?

Indeed, Slobo needed the UCK-KLA, so he invented it. And thus, by sheer logic, he must have been the man who whispered into the ears of the German BND and the CIA that they should build the KLA, 20.000 fighters with good training, uniforms and arms and take KLA off the US government's list of terror organizations. It all worked according to his Master Plan.


How Slobo became Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot in one: Rwanda!…


Well, I could go on and on. But you get the thrust of my analysis: He single-handed caused all the tragedy in former YU. Here for the first time you get the full analysis of how he did it. There is too much diplomacy and sentimentalism somehow, too much wishy-washy talk of the complexity of all this. No defence of him or his fellow Serbs is possible. This conflict was unique in looking complex but being in fact so very simple: one big black and many smaller whites. And Slobo was the big black guy who deserved to be punished and now to be dead.

Oh, yes, talking about black..I almost forgot to tell you how he is likely to have been behind the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi too. We somehow missed what happened there at the time. This is about an early Axis of Evil between China, YU and Rwanda that he masterminded while you thought at the time that he only did bad things in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

You remember that the U.S. bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade? We were told that it was a mistake, after which CIA stood for Can't Identify Anything. Be this as it may, dictators know each other, and no doubt Slobo must have been on good terms with Mobutu in Congo. Indeed he probably had shares in the diamond mines there. Slobo had begun to build good relations with China since he knew that if his YU plot was revealed, no one would support him in Europe or the U.S. So he had started courting China and invited tens of thousands of Chinese to become citizens of Serbia.

Some time in the 1994 he sent his son Marko down to Mobutu on diamond business but after a stop-over in Nairobi, the plane was forced to go down in Kigali, Rwanda due to bad weather. Somehow this Mafia Marko was received at the highest level and got word that a genocide was underway but those who planned it had mentioned that they needed to import millions of machetes. They knew China produced them. So Marko immediately called up his father in Belgrade and, yes, he would be more than willing to serve as middleman to the Chinese. Against a fee, of course. How many millions of machetes were needed, did you say? Ethnic cleansing here and there, it the same everywhere...

So Milosevic became a low-tech arms dealer too with a Chinese Connection, mafia money and what have you. It seems beyond doubt that the machetes that were used to kill more than a million in the two small African states were brought there thanks to Milosevic Junior and Senior.

So when the Chinese helped Slobo with military communication and intelligence during NATO's destruction of Serbia, Clinton thought that the very least he could do to compensate for doing nothing about the African genocide was to kill two birds with one stone.

That's how he came to bomb the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, or more precisely the corner of it that contained all the military and intelligence communication. Thus he punished both the Chinese and Slobo for their role in both YU and Rwanda and Burundi.

This also points to the deep logic in having two International Crimes Tribunals, one for YU (1993) and one for Rwanda (1994) and only for these two wars of all: Slobo the Stalinist-Maoist was behind both.

I have now revealed to you how you can safely add another million at least to his millions of victims. No wonder we hear the media call him the names they do...

How soft-headed to call Milosevic a butcher only…


My objective research lead me to conclude that there is some strange kind of softness or sentimentalism now this evil man has died. The media and the Western diplomats who speak about him these days should grasp the broader and deeper dimensions of his conspiracy, his intrigue and his Fascist plan and not only call him a butcher. "Butcher" is kind of too homy, if you see what I mean, makes this Balkan Monster too human. But he was a beast.

There is no doubt that every massacre that happened, every village that was torched and any woman who was raped all happened because of his personal cruel Master Plan and on his order. History, economy, the activities of other actors in former YU don't mean a thing. He is guilty of it all and we should not be afraid of saying it aloud just because he has died.

Thank God we woke up in time

Therefore let us all celebrate that the Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, the EU, the U.S. and everybody else in the international community started comparing notes and recognized - just before it would have been too late - that they were all pawns in Milosevic' game. They had all been lured into his cobweb of lies, false promises and calculated moves to play their mutually compatible and individually innocent roles in his sadistic drama. Had they not woken up in time, they would all live in Greater Serbia - and so would the rest of us in Europe presumably.

Fortunately, Bill Clinton helped Franjo, last moment, to drive the Serbs out of Croatia. They had to pay that price although they had lived there fore 400 years and defended Europe against the Turks once upon a time. You can't win them all, as they say! Fortunately we did not give Serb minorities anywhere in YU the support we gave the other minorities - so they ran to Serbia and became refugees with no right to return.

Sanctions on Serbia was only fair. Remember Slobo took steps early that ruined the economy as we have shown above. What a luck that we revealed in time that names like Stupni Do, Merkhala, the Bread Queue Massacre, Srebrenica and Racak etc. was all the work of this sadistic maniac.

The only good thing about him was that his policies permitted us to stand up for principles of human rights, freedom and dignity that we Westerners believe so deeply in. Thus we could bomb in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia proper with good conscience and look back upon everything we did as good and fair and just. Now there is true peace everywhere.

Slobo and his Serbs only got what they deserved: just war. The dream of Greater Serbia became a de facto Smaller Serbia. We were all fooled by him but, thank God and Praise the Prophet, we got it all right before it was too late.

Now he is dead. Serves him right. His death was a little abrupt - presumably part of some new Plan in this monster's mind. It would perhaps be more fair if he had gotten a lifetime sentence and suffered for years in his cell half dying with inadequate medical assistance. We don't know and why bother? We did the right thing and got Serbs and Serbia on their knees because they were the last nationalists in our globalizing world, stubborn, backward and self-pitying.


Just a few questions remain to be investigated…


There isn't much more to say. It's all clear. But I am aware that research is an ongoing process. You have to re-search and challenge even your own assumptions and results. I know I must study much more questions such as these:

Why were everybody else in former YU so naïve? Why did they willingly act out the roles he assigned to them, from the Slovenes to the Albanians?

How come that so many Westerners were so easy to fool? Why were they so innocent and why did they go along with this monster for so long? Why did ministers, mediators, ambassadors, Contact Group members queue up outside his office or meet him at international conferences year after year?

Why on earth did they let him, the man guilty of everything - and they must have known it at some point - sign the Dayton Agreement under the leadership of Richard Holbrooke in 1995?

How come one mission after the other was established in Belgrade and Kosovo and why did this Holbrooke - who the day after Milosevic' death in a CNN interview used Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot and Stalin to describe his evil - do business with him as later as autumn 1998?

I am sure it could not possibly be because they were of the same stock.

The medialised sentence and public opinion based distribution of guilt…


Permit me to end this analysis with a few serious and slightly more truthful observations than the above fiction.

Slobodan Milosevic was undoubtedly responsible for much of the suffering, of that I am totally convinced too. But I have a nasty mind. I sense the international so-called community is happy that the final proof of what Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for will never be presented to the world. We'll never know how big is the difference between the facts and the accusations against him. Leading media already give full throttle to prejudice, biases, propaganda and factual mistakes - no risk of being proven wrong or seen as exaggerating later by a Hague sentence.

At the end of the day, what does it matter? Holbrooke made a surprisingly innovative distinction when interviewed by CNN's Becky Anderson on March 12, namely the one between the not-so-important legal procedure and sentence in the Hague (that we will never get now) and the judgment or verdict of years by what he called the world public opinion. The truth was, he said, that the latter had already condemned Milosevic and so his death was actually nothing but rough justice.

So we should feel good about the fact that no one any longer respects the principle that a person shall be considered innocent until proven guilty. General public opinion that is based on the media, at least for those who have no personal relation with or can visit the hot spot in question and see for themselves, is enough. War reporters, commercialised media, commentators and selected experts are now the real judges in the - Holbrooken - future.

Exit analysis, complexity, fairness, impartiality and truth-seeking. The truth about the world is constructed and medialised and it serves as the final moral High Judge.

As you will have understood by now, most of this article contains stories, lies and inventions. I could find no other tools to explain at a deeper level what made Milosevic and the Serbs - and only them - the architects of Evil in the new medialised court room.

Those who blame exclusively the Serbs and Milosevic for the Balkan tragedy and invoke Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot must base themselves on an analysis fairly close to the invented story I have told above. If not, would they please present their analysis so anyone can judge for themselves the words they freely throw around.

If they don't, the medialised Justice will continue to be nothing but racism in disguise.