Yugoslavia in 2000Article Free Pass
|Area:||102,173 sq km (39,449 sq mi)|
|Population||(2000 est.): 10,662,000|
|Chief of state:||Presidents Slobodan Milosevic and, from October 7, Vojislav Kostunica|
|Head of government:||Prime Ministers Momir Bulatovic and, from November 4, Zoran Zizic|
In September and October 2000, Yugoslav voters, forming a surprisingly united democratic opposition front and mounting massive public demonstrations, ended the autocratic rule of Slobodan Milosevic—a regime that had persisted for longer than a decade.
The events that led to Milosevic’s overthrow surprised all parties involved. On October 5, angered by a Constitutional Court decision that had nullified the September 24 presidential election—which most believed had been won by the chief opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica (see Biographies)—hundreds of thousands of people converged upon Belgrade. Crowds stormed the federal parliament and took over state television. They met with little resistance from police, who often joined the demonstrators. A day later the court decision was reversed, Milosevic conceded defeat, and on October 7 Kostunica was sworn in as the new president. Opposition parties also swept to victory in federal parliamentary and municipal elections. The international community quickly recognized Kostunica’s victory, and the country was promptly reinstated into the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council of Europe after having been suspended for eight years. By year’s end diplomatic relations had been reestablished with the former Yugoslav republics, the U.S., and other countries.
However great was the public astonishment and joy, discontent with the new pro-democratic leadership soon bubbled to the surface along several fault lines: a dire economic situation and severe energy crisis; continuing instability in Kosovo; new hopes for autonomy voiced by provincial leaders in Vojvodina (with a large Hungarian minority) and the Sandzak (an ethnically mixed area); debates over the future status of Montenegro, the second (with Serbia) constituent republic of Yugoslavia; and bickering between the forces that had ousted Milosevic.
Kostunica, a former law professor, had no experience in government, and the fractious coalition of 18 parties that formed his Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) was difficult to hold together. Kostunica was a nationalist and frequently criticized U.S. support of nongovernmental bodies and independent media in Yugoslavia. He initially refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in their pursuit of figures indicted as war criminals—notably Milosevic—for fear that such a move would destabilize Yugoslavia.
The drastic decline in the standard of living and economic instability continued into the post-Milosevic era. The new leadership discovered that the former regime had emptied the state coffers as well as warehouses once filled with food, fuel, and medical supplies. Inflation raged, and prices increased to such a level that staple foodstuffs, electricity, and heating were unattainable for large numbers of people. Belgrade’s Institute of Economic Sciences forecast that about 30% of the population would require welfare assistance by early 2001. With no money to finance such a program, however, the state would have to rely on foreign assistance.
Meanwhile, Milosevic was still a presence on the scene; he was reelected head of the Socialist Party of Serbia on November 25. The former strongman was reportedly biding his time, convinced that the public would grow weary of Kostunica. He labeled the current leadership “traitors” and attributed his defeat as having been orchestrated by the West. He blamed the new leadership for making already difficult living conditions even worse and warned of severe economic hardships and renewed unrest to come. Milosevic’s attempts to discredit the DOS failed, however. The DOS scored another victory in the December 23 elections to the Serbian parliament, taking 176 seats to the Socialists’ 37.
Montenegro’s ruling coalition agreed to call a referendum on the republic’s status by June 2001. Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro’s president, said he was convinced that Montenegro and Serbia would succeed in reaching agreement on their future relations within the Yugoslav federation. Public opinion in Montenegro did not favour independence, but the majority envisioned some form of state sovereignty.
The situation in Kosovo remained unstable more than one year after a peace settlement had ended the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Some 42,500 members of the NATO-led Kosovo Force in the province struggled to protect Serbs, Turks, and Roma (Gypsies) from ethnic Albanians seeking revenge. All the while, organized crime activities and mutual distrust among Albanian leaders hindered efforts to rebuild the economy and civil institutions. Kosovo voters gave the majority in the communal elections to Ibrahim Rugova’s Democratic League of Kosovo, and the more radical Democratic Party of Kosovo, headed by former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, finished a distant second. Because both leaders advocated Kosovo’s full independence from Yugoslavia, voters viewed the election as the first step toward sovereignty. They simply opted for the less-violent methods of Rugova’s party. Serbs in the province abstained from voting and by and large did not recognize the newly elected ethnic Albanians. In November ethnic Albanian militants launched an offensive into a demilitarized zone between Serbia and Kosovo in an effort to declare heavily populated Albanian districts independent of Serbia and part of Kosovo.
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