Attack Plan, Defense Plan

The whole thing was divided into several stages. One of the first was to protect themselves and arm the people. Covic was rightly accused by the regime of procuring a trailer of arms. He, Djindjic, Batic and Velimir Ilic, co-president of New Serbia party, organized task forces. They were composed of former policemen and soldiers, well armed and sufficiently cool-headed. It is not for everybody to know how to talk to the police, how to overpower an armed man, when to throw the tear gas, and when to pull a gun.

Roadblocks were a story of its own. For fear of the possibility that the police might attack with all its might and smash the roadblocks at the very beginning, it was decided to place them as far as possible from Belgrade, where the DOS was strong enough to defend them. The most impressive roadblock was the one on the Ibar highway, near Preljina. It was set up by about a hundred truck drivers from Cacak. The police did not even dare come over to it.

The decision on "columns from five directions" was made on 3 October. The column leaders were picked – Perisic would lead the one from Nis; Svilanovic and Velja Ilic, the one from Uzice and Cacak; Vuk Obradovic and Jozef Kasa, that from Novi Sad and Subotica; Dragan Veselinov, from Banat; Dusan Petrovic and Ratko Filipovic, from Srem and Sabac.

The DOS leaders evidently read Curzio Malaparte's "Techniques of a Coup d’ ?tat". When Mussolini set off for Rome in October 1922, Malaparte claims, nobody could stop him. That was the first part. The second one should have been similar to what Trotsky did in October 1917 in Petersburg – taking over key points in the city.
People from Sabac, Srem and Valjevo should have surrounded the Belgrade airport; people from Novi Sad, the federal government building in New Belgrade; people from Banat had to block the seat of the Belgrade police, in 29 November Street; people from Nis would storm the building of the RTS in Takovska Street; while those from Uzice and Cacak were in charge of the Federal Parliament building.
Columns were equipped with heavy machinery – bulldozers and trucks – explosives and arms. All possible barriers were considered, along with the ways for eliminating them.

That is how October 5 should have begun, to be continued by allowing the people from Nis to do what they wanted in the RTS, while the task forces, with the help of "insiders" in the Yugoslav Parliament, using a ladder, would rush into it through windows, disarm the police and open the doors to the DOS leaders, Kostunica and several hundred people.
After having taken the Federal Parliament, with the people in front, the DOS would have barricaded itself inside the building. They would have asked for negotiations on Milosevic’s departure, while Kostunica would have addressed the nation.
His address was to be broadcast by Studio B, already in the hands of Captain Dragan; and after that also by the experimental television Vracar, its transmitters erected on October4; TV Pink, the staff of which agreed to take it over; and finally, the RTS itself. A special team of the Democratic Party was stationed on Mt. Avala, where they, with the help of a special device, would have penetrated the RTS frequencies and broadcast the DOS "program".

According to what the DOS had planned, Serbia should have followed suit. Thousands of demonstrators were in charge of blocking police stations and going to military barracks. The barracks were not to be touched but one had to be friendly with the troops. Take presents and flowers. Kiss guys in uniforms…

"That's the way to stop the military," Djindjic thought going back to the party headquarters. He was sleepy, exhausted, he had nothing to eat for four days and lost four kilograms. Coming to his office, he pull the chair to the desk, took off his clothes and, in his undershirt and boxer shorts, covered himself with a blanket. He did not fall asleep, one could sooner say that he fainted.

"This is bad" a police officer of Belgrade police thought, a young man with a face hardened by fatigue and work he was engaged in. "This will be a hell of a screwup," he told himself and closed his eyes. Some ten hours ago, colonel Milos Vojinovic called him to come to the city police headquarters. They remained there until 11 in the evening making a plan for the protection of buildings and facilities in the capital. He knew how inferior the plan was.
Plans for securing buildings during opposition meetings were prepared by the city police, in normal conditions, even ten days in advance. Who waited for the eleventh hour or why, the officer did not know. Vojinovic called him back from a trip. That is probably called "at the last moment". In the Belgrade police headquarters, he met an official of the Serbian Ministry of Interior, a panic- stricken man who told him:
"Unless we protect the buildings tomorrow, we can start packing".
Nothing else.

He had no special orders for the plan. "As if nobody expected anything big," the officer thought while he was writing. He could not understand it. Not because he was a candidate of the Democratic Party in the local election in the early 1990s but because he was a policeman, and policemen know how that job should be done. "Ten per cent of men with long barrels" he thought, "should I write that down?" "Nobody asked for them," the officer concluded, "that means, I won't. Only nightsticks and chemicals. Nothing more."
Then, he planned two squads for the Federal Parliament, along with those from the Federal Brigade of the police; two squads for the Serbian Parliament; Presidency, two squads; RTS, three squads; Studio B, one squad, and then added two more. A police squad numbers 25 people. Less than 500 people were planned for all the facilities. To this figure we should add another 600 members of special police units from different Serbian cities (in the end, only 300 arrived from Leskovac, Pirot and Vranje), and close to 2500 Belgrade policemen, involved in one way or another in the developments on October 5 (in police stations, in the headquarters, on the outskirts of the city...).
In all, 3,650 policemen to resist the protesters, counted the officer in the end.
"Not enough," he thought. "A poor estimate".

A poor estimate seems to be the police tradition, at least as far as demonstrations are concerned. The regime based on fear took its due even in this case: the police regularly diminished the number of protesters, by several times. The reports were read by Milosevic and they were afraid that he might get angry at hearing the exact figures.
On the eve of the elections, when Kostunica and Milosevic held conventions simultaneously, the former in front of the Federal Parliament, and the latter in the still unfinished sports hall in New Belgrade, a record was set: a police report read that 20,000 people attended Kostunica’s and 30,000 Milosevic’s convention!
It was like October 5. In the police radio traffic, the latest figure mentioned at 3 p. m. was – 70,000 protesters. Colonel Buha, who out of habit multiplied the police figures by three or four before going into action, says that when he arrived at the back of the federal parliament building about 4 p. m. and saw demonstrators, he thought: "Holy Mother, there are ten times more of them!"

The "army leader" Vlajko Stoiljkovic gave a hand in the lousy planning. The idea of encircling Belgrade with three rings and stopping columns of demonstrators as soon as they set off for the capital is ascribed to him. Top police officials did not read Malaparte. According to the theoretician of the techniques of revolution and coup d’ état, in days such as October 5, "Trotsky should be confronted with Trotsky". In other words, the DOS revolutionary committee did not have a worthy opponent on the Serbian D Day. Stojiljkovic’s epic military plan: what one lets by, the other waits for, at the end of the 20th century looks at least outdated.
What is more important, such a strategy splits the police even before anything happens. People in the reseda room were well aware of that. For the first time, the special police had to act "piecemeal". They have never been so much dispersed before. These units were, in fact, formed for the purpose of joint action – on the principle: people from a number of police centers gathered together at one place – instead of chasing the protesters on roadblocks, in smaller groups.

"That won’t do," one of the officers thought, "and there is nobody to fire". He was, as much as all other people in the room quite clear that the plan of the whole action was foul. They didn’t even think of doing anything in that connection.

"After the vote, the knowledge that Milosevic lost the elections penetrated the policemen’s minds," Radomir Markovic, chief of the State Security Service, said later giving testimony for this book. "Whether it was 49 point something per cent or 50 per cent was irrelevant for these people. It was indisputable that Kostunica had won much more votes than Milosevic.

"Kostunica has certainly won," an officer from the reseda room said, "I voted for him".

"The question in the heads of the police is whether to defend that one percent or point one percent," Markovic said.

Accordingly, one may say that there were two reasons for what happened on October 5: indecisiveness of the police and resoluteness of the demonstrators. It is interesting to note that, according to what Rade Markovic said, the top officials of the state were not aware of either of them:
"The Service was aware of the organization. The Service was aware of the people’s intention to come to Belgrade. It also knew about the frontmen. We did not know, we did not even dream that armed people would come. Nobody went so far as to assume that the resoluteness and decisiveness of the demonstrators were such that they were even ready to risk their lives ".

In addition, Markovic did not know that his subordinate, chief of Special Operations Units, was meeting Zoran Djindjic. Neither did he know that people from the reseda room were, through special lines, telling the policemen in the field: "No firing". Or that Nebojsa Pavkovic was sleeping peacefully only because he had already decided not to get his hands dirty the following day.

"I am not aware of any contacts of the Public Security Service with the DOS. I know of such contacts of the State Security Service but they were established after the unrest, on October 5 in the afternoon, to calm down the situation," the head of the state security says.
According to him, until October 5, the State Security "practically had nothing to do". However. two details demonstrate that it was not so. Most likely, the State Security managed to learn of Djindjic’s plan in the night between 24 and 25 September to establish contact between colonel Zivko Trajkovic, commander of Special Anti-Terrorist Units, and Vojislav Kostunica, who had just won the election.
Both Kostunica and Trajkovic liked the idea but it did not come true. Trajkovic was, summarily, deposed from the position and given another job in Kursumlija, three hundred kilometers far from Belgrade. Djindjic began more concerned of what he said and where, and started using the scrambled satellite telephone more often. The State Security also deserves the professional merit for learning about a trailer of arms ordered by Covic. However, where the trailers arrived and what was unloaded from them, they have never learnt.

All in all – a clumsy affair. To stop the people who could not be stopped that day; to use the police who did not want to fight for Milosevic any more for the purpose; to count that only Belgraders will gather in Belgrade, that "Belgraders are nice people" and will only "sing and dance"... those were the ideas of Vlajko Stojiljkovic on the eve of the most significant day in the recent history of Serbia.

Copyright © 2001 Dragan Bujosevic, Ivan Radovanovic