ABBREVIATIONS
AK - Army Corps
ATAF - Air Task Force
D - Day 1 of Operation
GSOS - Joint Chiefs
of Staff of Combat Forces
inž. puk. - Engineer Regiment
JIG - Southeastern Group
JNA - Yugoslav People's Army
K - Corps
lap - Light Artillery Regiment
lap PTO - Light Artillery Regiment of Anti-Tank Defence
lap PZO - Light Artillery Regiment of Ground Air Defence
lbr - Light Brigade
lpbr - Light Infantry Brigade
map - Combined Artillery Anti-tank Brigade
mpoabr - Mixed Artillery Anti-tank Brigade
mtbr - Motorized Tank Brigade
OG - Operational Group
okbr - Armored Brigade
OS - Armed Forces
OT - Armored Vehicle
pad br - Parachute Brigade
partbr - Guerilla Brigade
PZO - Air Defense
RZ - Air Force
SANU - Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences
SZG - Northwest Group
TG - Tactical Group
TO - Territorial Defense
UG - Action Group
VO - Military Region
VPO - Naval Region
ZK - Air Force Corps
zpokd - Airborne Division
ZSRV - CSWG
1 The most respectable theoretical postulates on the dependence of the army and social systems based on such a methodological approach are those of M.D.Feld (The Structure of Violence: Armed Force as Social Systems, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, London, 1997).
2 Feld makes a distinction between five different types of military organisations: (a) external subjugation - imperial army; (b) internal subjugation - feudal army; (c) closed equality - national army; (d) ideological equality - all-embracing army; (e) open equality - representative army
3 An important role in the JNA was played by the political bodies which were under direct influence of the SKJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia). They had a special political responsibility and cohesion role within the Armed Forces. Other specialized parts of the Supreme Command were in charge of political activities based on the following specific tasks: monitoring and estimating the moral and political state of units and proposing measures for their reinforcement; organisation of social and political education of the enlisted personnel and recruits based on the Marxist paradigm; shaping and organisation of cultural, educational and leisure activities within the units; informing the domestic and international public about the work and life in the armed forces; encouraging the military personnel to take an active part in the political and social life of their respective communities; monitoring the propaganda and psychological activities by potential adversaries and proposing counter measures. Moreover, in addition to a well developed political structure within the Yugoslav Armed Forces, there was also a well developed party mechanism which could pursue its basic function only in very close cooperation with other political segments.
4 In an "open equality - representative army" type military (developed democracy) promotion is granted to technical experts and managers, i.e. executives who know how to derive the most from the human and material resources in their charge. In such a system, an officer is not considered to have "the proprietorship" of his command, or the consciousness of society. He is considered to be an operator within the national defence mechanism.
5 Lower level units "are overwhelmed" by the mass (high numbers). In such a system, NCOs bear no significance and officers take over their functions, thus disturbing the military hierarchy.
6 In developed democracies, this is emphasized as the "civilian supervision over the military".
7 The attitude of a military factor towards state authority within an "open-equality type army" (developed democracy) is entirely different. Military command is responsible only for combat readiness, but it has no say as to when and against whom the military force is going to be used.
8 This postulate has been taken from the "Eastern School of Thought", where military power is projected by the quantity, rather than quality of units. The notion used is "masirovanije sili."
9 Although scientific research was carried out, and although during the 80s there was an opportunity for the army personnel to obtain academic degrees (masters and doctoral degrees) in military doctrine, those individuals were not appointed to managerial and command positions. Therefore, they could neither significantly influence the doctrine nor change the well-established postulates on the use of the armed forces.
10 Formations, headquarters units and institutions formed the Territorial Defence. Hence, this was a military organisational form which secured the massive numbers and extended duration in the conduct of the war. The 1974 Constitution for the first time provided the consititutional and legal framework for the Territorial Defence. Subsequently, all the Republics (except for Serbia) passed their respective national defence acts. Hitherto, such a territorial defence gave the Republics a certain degree of independence in the defense area. This, in turn, reinforced the degree of their respective statehood and that is why the Territorial Defense was the first to be targeted by the proponents of "Great Serbian" idea.
11 Veljko Kadijević: "My Views on Dissolution", Belgrade, 1993, p. 75
12 The term "administrative borders" used by General Veljko Kadijević illustrates that the JNA had already adopted the "Greater Serbian" political platform that the borders of the republics were not state borders. This was an indirect negation of the federalism of Yugoslavia, and ultimately of Yugoslavia as a state.
13 This case is a blatant example of the disruption of the chain of command that took place at the highest strategic level. Military Region commanders become absolutely independent of the Supreme Command and reported directly only to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the SFRJ.
14 The intentions are summed up by the following quotations: "The resolution on the dissolution of the Territorial Defence of Kosovo was passed and enforced on the grounds that it has been predominantly composed of separatist forces. After its dissolution, a new Territorial Defence Organisation of Kosovo was set up, on a much smaller scale and composed of pro-Yugoslavia oriented people."
"Significant effort was invested in the final agreement on the dissolution of the Committees on National Defence and Social Protection. This eliminated the risk factor which had created confusion in the national defence management and the armed forces command".
"One of the most significant measures which was applied in order to paralyse the perilous constitutional concept of armed forces was the decision to seize weapons from the Territorial Defence and place them under JNA control".
15 The very term "strategy of an armed battle" is questionable from the point of view of war theory and practical activity. If a state adopts its military strategy and makes it public, this military strategy cannot be reduced to an armed battle only, since there are a number of other ways to deal with a conflict situation. Why then such an approach and what does it imply? Only that all conflicts are to be resolved by armed force. For the armed forces this implies that they are the ones who will be empowered to determine when, against whom and how they are to act. Such armed forces assume the position of an out of control political factor.
16 Strategija ONO i DSZ (ND and TD Strategy), p. 151, SSNO, 1987.
17 People Management and Training for Extraordinary Circumstances and Under War Conditions, JNA HIGH Political School, p. 45, Belgrade, 1989.
18 Kadijević himself provided an answer to the question of how convincing this scenario of the geo-strategic relationship was at the time, by saying: "In military terms, Yugoslavia was not under the protection of an umbrella of the military power of any bloc. However, it was protected by the umbrella of balance, i.e. the leverage of powers between the blocs." On a hypothetical note, had there been a scenario of military aggression, it would certainly not have remained neutral in such a geo-strategically sensitive area.
19 The term was coined by Professor Radovan Radinović, Ph.D., a Lieutenant General whose general's thesis (a coincidence?), defended in 1985, bore the same title: "Battle in Space". The topic was suggested by Admiral Branko Mamula, the then Federal Secretary of National Defence. The controversy of such a title lies in the fact that nothing can physically exist if not in a space, especially not a battle (author's note.).
20 This was the first time that anybody proposed a plan conceived by a strategic group whose task was to seize two-thirds of the Adriatic from Croatia.
21 "Not only did Yugoslavia have to be broken up, but its states had to be set at such variance that no agreement among them was possible either at that time or in the future. That is why they had to be pushed into a civil war over future state borders", Veljko Kadijević, ibid. p. 26.
22 The islands of Vis and Lastovo were almost completely isolated by the ban on foreign tourist visits. Despite the importance of these two islands from the military point of view, it was absolutely unnecessary to develop such a military infrastructure which would completely pacify them (the construction of apartments for the military, barracks, storage facilities, underground shelters and facilities for ships and rocket systems). As a result of that, the Croats emigrated from these islands.
23 Towards the end of the 80s, the units of MALI (Marine Assault Landing Infantry) were renamed into expedition units, so that the MALI Squadron became the Marine Expeditionary Squadron, the MALI Brigade become the Marine Expeditionary Brigade and the MALI Division became the Marine Expeditionary Division. The renaming was due to the fact that the term "expeditionary" corresponded much better to the nature, mission and activities of the US Marine Corps.
24 The 5th Banja Luka Corps and the 17th Tuzla Corps shared the same task: break the resistance on the Una and Sava rivers and launch a counter-attack towards Una-Bihać-Slunj-Ogulin and Nova Gradiška-Okučani-Pakrac-Bjelovar.
25 According to Veljko Kadijević, the two main tasks of the continental JNA armies, predominantly armored mechanized units, were as follows: (1) to "liberate" Eastern Slavonia; (2) to be the principal manoeuver force of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the penetration toward Zagreb and Varaždin (Podravina and Posavina operational directions).
26 "As regards the international level, we would have fallen right into the trap, and immediately or very quickly we would have been exposed not only to different types of sanctions but also to military interventions and attacks of all sorts. In this way, not only would Yugoslavia not have been saved, but a new Yugoslavia would have been created under much more difficult conditions than those under which it was actually created. To my mind, the subsequent chain of events provided support for our assessment of the situation at the time," Veljko Kadijević, ibid., p. 115.
27 To attack the barracks at a time (the war in Slovenia) when neither political nor military conditions were favorable would have meant falling into the strategic trap.
28 Kadijević wrote in general terms about the employment of the JNA forces: "During this stage of the war, when the JNA is unable to perform its mission, which was to defend the Serbian people in Croatia by preventing conflicts between nations, it had to wait for an open attack, which would be visible to all and which would unambiguously expose the perpetrator and the victim, and clearly show who was the one imposing the war, and only then fight back." (underlined by author) ibid., p. 133.
29 This reveals the connection between this date and the Belgrade scenario (March 9) when the JNA troops descended upon the streets of Belgrade in order to pacify the situation. If this had been done in Belgrade, then there was no reason why it could not have been done in the entire territory of former Yugoslavia. Kosovo 1981, Kosovo 1987, and Belgrade 1991 were all part of the same plan on how to create chaos, then proclaim a state of emergency and use arms. The Belgrade March events were not an attempt to overthrow Milošević, but an induced and channelled "chaos" conducive to a state of emergency and the pacification of former Yugoslavia, and subsequently to the creation of a "Greater Serbia".
30 Veljko Kadijević, Ibid., p. 128.
31 Veljko Kadijević, Ibid., p. 134.
32 The Instruction was issued in 1990 and signed by the then Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary, General Blagoje Adžić. It was dispatched for temporary use during the period between May 1, 1990 and December 31, 1992. This most likely corresponded to the period during which a "Greater Serbia" was to be created. At the end of the approval for deployment it was stated that during 1993, the instruction would be brought in line with the new "strategy of armed combat", i.e. no longer with the "strategy of ND and SSP". SSNO, Belgrade, 1990.
33 Veljko Kadijević, Ibid., p. 135.
34 It should be noted that the plan did not contain the "liberation" of Slovenia, and for this reason, the war in Slovenia must be regarded differently, but certainly from the point of view of its impact on the war in Croatia.
35 On different occasions, Tuđman stated that he had been asked and that it had been proposed to him to attack the JNA during the armed conflict in Slovenia and that he had refused to do so. I have never commented upon these statements, but I thought then and I still think that it would have been much better for us if he had attacked at that time rather than later, as it was obvious that conflict was inevitable, and that time was not on our side. And for the reasons elaborated in detail in the section on the deployment of the JNA, we were obliged at that stage of the conflict to wait for an attack, rather than to initiate one. Veljko Kadijević, Ibid., p. 129.
36 Veljko Kadijević: "My Views of Dissolution," Belgrade, 1993, p. 146.
37 Veljko Kadijević, ibid., p. 145 - 147.
38 See: "Preparations for Aggression Against Croatia or Transformation of JNA into the Serbian Imperial Force", Hrvatski Vojnik, no. 26, August 1997.
40 The term group is conditional in order to highlight its true intention.
41 The strategic peak or the strategic culmination point is the value of the maximum military power of one side in the war at a certain point in time and in a certain area. After reaching the peak, the military power of the attacking side starts to decline, but it never reaches a value close to zero.
42 This hypothesis was presented in the paper "The End of War and the Croatian Independence War: Decision on When to Stop", Norman Cigar, ERASMVS, April 1997, pp. 37-54.
43 Clausewitz wrote the following on this subject: "The goal of an attack is to occupy the enemy territory. This implies that the advance must last until the superiority is spent. This aims at the goal, but it may also lead away from it. If we know the number of elements in the equation of powers, then it becomes clear how difficult it may be in particular cases to determine which one of the adversaries is superior. Often, it all depends on the silk thread of fantasy. All depends on being able to foresee the peak by a refined spiritual spark of assessment."
Since the joint goal of the JNA and Serbia was the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they must have provided in their war plans for the power to do that, as their plans had provided for the forces necessary for the war in Croatia. The Serbian predominance could only be used up in the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, during one of the stages of that war. (author note).
44 Hrvatski vojnik (Croatian Soldier), no. 26, 1997, ibid. p. 16.
45 This strategic principle is often forgotten or ignored, hence the conclusion that Croatia could have carried out an assault strategic operation as early as 1991 and/or 1992.
46 "There are many wars in which the actual waging of war accounts for the lesser period of time, and the rest is suspension," Karl von Clauzewitz, "On War", p. 59, MORH, Zagreb, 1997.
48 By the end of July 1991, the JNA had agreed to withdraw its formations (14th and 31st corps) from Slovenia within the following three months. The retreat was planned to be completed by the end of October 1991. Both formations were initially deployed in Western Serbia, a larger part of the 31st Maribor and a smaller part of the 14th Ljubljana Corps were incorporated in the 17th Corps, which had sustained major losses in Western Slavonia, and a larger part of the 14th Corps was incorporated in the 2nd Podgorica Corps.
At the beginning of December, the 13th Rijeka Corps was shipped to the harbour of Bar in Montenegro. A larger part of this corps was deployed in Eastern Herzegovina at the beginning of 1992, and from these forces, the Trebinje - Bileaa OG forces were then formed. The units of the 10th Zagreb Corps were initially moved to Slunj, and subsequently to Bihaa. They formed the nucleus of the newly formed Bihaa Corps, which was later renamed the 2nd Krajina Corps. Likewise, during November and December of 1991, a smaller part of the 10th Corps was incorporated in the 17th Tuzla Corps. The last JNA formation which left the territory of Croatia was the 9th Knin Corps, which was deployed in the territory of Western Bosnia: Bosansko Grahovo-Glamoe-Kupres.
49 The area consisted of four corps: 1st Belgrade, 12th Novi Sad, 17th Tuzla and 24th Kragujevac and a Guards division and the Defense of the City of Belgrade, with a total of 75,000 people.
50 After the retreat from Macedonia, the 41st and the 42nd Corps were incorporated into the 3rd Military Region and deployed in Zaječar, Knjaževac and Paraćin, and Leskovac and Valjevo respectively. The latter Corps would be transformed into a new, 20th Corps (Leskovac). The command of the 3rd Military Region was moved from Skopje to Niš. Directly reporting to this command were the 21st Niš and 52nd Priština Corps.
51 The 2nd Military Region comprised of the following: 5th Corps (Banja Luka), 10th Corps (Bihaa), 4th Corps (Sarajevo) and 9th Corps (Knin), i.e. (Grahovo-Glamoč-Kupres).
52 Within this Military Region were: 2nd Corps (Podgorica), 37th Corps ( Uzice) and 13th Corps (Mostar) and OG Trebinje-Bileca (Bileca).
53 This must have been a major challenge for the intelligence service, since it pointed to the importance of being well-informed about the specific composition of every unit in order to be able to make realistic judgements on their real combat potential. In other words, considering only the "by-the-book" composition of a particular formation may have resulted in erroneous conclusions or decision-making.
54 During the clamping operations and blockade, i.e. the attempt to conquer Sarajevo, the commanding officers of the JNA corps were as follows: the 13th (Herzegovina) Corps, Major General Momeilo Perišia, the 9th (Kupres, Glamoe, Grahovo) Corps Major General Savo Kovaeevia; the 10th (Western Bosnia) Corps, Major General, Špiro Ninkovia; the 17th (Eastern Bosnia) Corps, Lieutenant General Savo Jankovia; the 5th (Banja Luka) Corps, Major General Vladimir Vukovia; and the 4th Corps (deployed around Sarajevo and partly within the city itself), Major General Vojislav ?ur?evac.
55 The order on the structuring of the "VRS" was signed by Lieutenant General Blagoje Adžić on May 10, 1992. At the same time, General Milutin Kukanjac was detained in the Sarajevo JNA Center. The order reads: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff shall be comprised of the following members: Chairman, Lieutenant General Ratko Mladić; Chief-of-Staff, Major General Manojlo Milovanović, Assistant Chief for Morale and Information, Major General Milan Gvero; Assistant Chief for the Rear, Major General Đorđe Đukić; Chief of Security, Colonel Zdravko Tolimir; and Chief of Mobilisation, Colonel Miao Grubor."
56 Army of Yugoslavia Foundation Day was July 16, 1992. There was an attempt to use this day of the "Third Serbian Army" in the territory of former Yugoslavia in a symbolical way in order to show that the JNA was not the Serbian imperial force, but rather a natural "consequence" of the string of events relative to the protection of the Serbian people. "Military regions" were abolished and replaced by the Army as the highest strategic formation. "The Army of Yugoslavia" consisted of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies, divided into corps and brigades.
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