Regular Bosnia commentator of the Belgrade weekly Vreme, Filip Svarm, writes on the current situation in Republika Srpska for the independent news pool AIM published in the July 10, 1997 issue of the Kragujevac by-weekly Nezavisna Svetlost.
The political crisis in Republika Srpska is developing at a speed of a movie. The whole situation seems to be approaching a grand nale. The conict is played with no gloves on, the game is played on a grand scale, and the stakes in are great. First of all, the things in question are truckloads of cigarettes, beer, detergent, cans, our, cisterns of oil and gasoline, or more precisely, millions of Deutch marks garnered from contraband of mentioned goods. Who controls that, rules in Republika Srpska.
The main actors are Dr. Plavsic in Banja Luka and Momcilo Krajisnik (member of the BiH Presidency) and Dr. Radovan Karadzic (the former RS president, currently in a specic internal exile) in Pale. The rst has accused the other two, and all their men in different institutions for perpetrating state crime, that is, for different criminal activities, mainly committed through the police force.
So, it turns out that one side is honourable and fearless professor of biology, Biljana Plavsic, and on the other, ruthless war proteers and Mafioso. Many of those who are, for various reasons, against the regime in Serbia, are inclined to see the conict in this manner. Even those that deeply favor the higher national interests will admit that lawlessness in RS has no boundaries. They will further agree that the population in RS, after four years of war, has no future, is hungry, in rags, shamed and robbed. But, a small number ask themselves whether the rule of the aforementioned actors, including the current president of RS, could have lead to anything else.
So, for Plavsic ethnic cleansing was a purely natural phenomenon, and, as far as she is concerned, six million Serbs could have died so that other six could live in freedom. In the context of the ethnically pure Serb state, on the territory of two thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she has staged one of the greatest humiliations of president Milosevic: she publicly refused to shake hands with him, when in Summer of 1993 on Mt. Jahorina, he attempted to persuade the leaders of Bosnian Serbs to accept the Vance-Owen peace plan.
It is clear what her standing was in ofcial Belgrade circles after this scene: for Milosevic she became a psychiatric case whose place is in a hospital, while she reminded Mira Markovic, his wife and head of the Yugoslav Left (JUL) of Dr. Mengele who experimented in the same manner with the resistance of some nations.
It could not be said that she was in particularly close relations with other leaders of RS. She went to Karadzics nerves, by saying in some circles that he is not a legitimately elected president, since he was elected by the Parliament, in difference to her, who won the elections in 1990. When she praised the military revolt against war proteers in Banja Luka in September 1993, she got into conict with Krajisnik too. Finally, neither with general Ratko Mladic - self-admitted organic patriot - was she in love: she objected that he was under certain inuence of Union of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia.
Due to the above, it seemed that Dr. Plavsic was to end her career in company of Mirko Jovic, Dragos Kalajic, Milic of Macva and similar universe Serbs.
Still, she held on, and has survived politically. More precisely, the Dayton came about. The Bosnian Serb leadership was completely disoriented at the time, under great pressure from Belgrade and international community, so as the new president they needed somebody who will neither lie down or kneel. The sam kind of prole was needed by Milosevic: to retain the status of the factor of peace and stability, it was necessary that there is somebody who had to be inuenced, and there was hardly a more appropriate person than maverick and thick headed Plavsic. Besides this, she was personally also quite popular, since she had no greater part in the losses in Bosnian Krajina and Sarajevo.
So, Dr. Plavsic became the president of RS. When the position of general Ratko Mladic at the top of RS Army became untenable, since, along with Dr. Karadzic he was accused of war crimes and genocide, with some problems involved, she deposed of him. This could be hardly done by rarely anybody in RS, and not be proclaimed a traitor. There were some other similar, but less important moves, and then things got in the place they belong.
Neither Krajisnik nor Milosevic were ready to share power with Plavsic in post-Dayton Bosnia, so more and more she became surpassed and marginalized. In the end, along with the Banja Luka lobby, which she joined a long time ago, and whose interests, it is thought, she represents, she became an obstacle and burden, when again, with the Agreement on Special and Parallel Relations, the old and tried channels between Belgrade and Pale were reopened. What came next - is already known.
Anti-corruption and anti -Mafia crusade started by Biljana Plavsic is to be commended. But, it is very hard for anything to change in Republika Srpska. Although, as much as she is right to condemn corrupted policemen and Mafioso in the governmental structures, for her, still, the war crimes, camps, burned villages, destroyed cities, resettled and exiled, piles of dead and injured, are not a problem. As her opponents, Biljana Plavsic keeps, and will keep quiet, because without all of that, none of them would be what they are today. While things stand that way, it is irrelevant whether the power is held by Dr. Plavsic or by Krajisnik and Dr. Karadzic. All of them, as well as their sponsors, due to the manner in which they have created the state, have built state crime in its foundations.
Source: Kragujevac by-weekly Nezavisna Svetlost, July 10, 1997
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