Fatal missteps hastened Milosevic's downfall

In this story: Early elections an 'obvious mistake' Wedded to own propaganda RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com writer

LONDON (CNN) - As millions of euphoric Yugoslav citizens blinked hard and asked 'Is he really gone?', perhaps no one was more astonished at the dramatic turn of events than Slobodan Milosevic himself, a man whose Houdini-like survival instincts broke the Balkan mould.

Milosevic's meteoric fall from grace this week, analysts say, followed a string of fatal missteps that demonstrated just how out of touch he had become with an electorate in whose name he fought for his vision of a 'Greater Serbia' over the past 13 years.

VIDEO CNN's Christiane Amanpour traces Milosevic's path from nationalist firebrand to leader bent on maintaining power (October 6) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

In the service of that vision, Milosevic involved his country in four losing wars. The conduct of his troops during those wars made 'ethnic cleansing' an international household term and culminated in Milosevic's indictment as a war criminal by The Hague, making him the first serving leader to bear the dubious title.

Along the way, he dragged his compatriots down with him: rampant corruption, plunging living standards and the stigma of living in a pariah state all became hallmarks of a regime that seemed to thrive on crisis and confrontation with the Western world.

Yet for all the outward signs of strain, until very recently very few observers - including the International Crisis Group -- thought the September 24 elections would yield anything more than another controversial victory for Milosevic.

After facing down so many external threats, most notably a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999, few were willing to bet that Milosevic would lose his grip on power on his home turf, in a vote among his own people.

"I think we were all to a certain extent trapped in a certain dogmatic way of thinking about these things," said Dana Allin, an analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Allin said the most obvious mistake Milosevic made was calling new elections nine months before his presidential mandate was set to expire.

Allin added that many Serbs at the time felt confident Milosevic was not going to win the election, but were nonetheless afraid he might call on his crack force of interior ministry troops - a sort of personal praetorian guard -- or unleash other provocations to ensure victory.

What Milosevic did not count on, Allin and others believe, is that the historically bickering opposition would somehow find common cause in a joint candidate.

The man they ultimately settled on -- a 56-year-old Belgrade lawyer and Serbian nationalist named Vojislav Kostunica - filled the opposition's need for a standard-bearer who would not be seen as kowtowing to the West.

Throughout the pre-election campaign Milosevic repeatedly cast himself as the guarantor of Yugoslav interests against the demonic designs of a conspiracy-minded West.

Countering the image of the opposition-as-western-lackey, Kostunica opposed the NATO intervention in Kosovo last year and stated flatly during his barnstorming campaign around the country that he would not turn Milosevic over to the Hague's war crimes tribunal if elected president.

Milosevic rode out NATO's bombing campaign in 1999

"Nobody imagined Kostunica would emerge," said Anthony Borden, the director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London. "We published stories saying forget the opposition. By luck, they just coalesced."

While the united opposition was a key factor in undermining Milosevic's power base, Borden believes that Milosevic's apparent downfall was also largely of his own doing.

He says the NATO bombing campaign, coupled with crippling sanctions on Yugoslavia and the president's indictment as a war criminal, "had a crucial impact on his ability to manoeuvre and his ability to lead the country. He really was out of touch. He was apparently communicating most of the time with his wife (Mirjana Markovic), and they were apparently ideologically driven."

Milosevic was so wedded to his own propaganda, analysts say, that he may have come to truly believe in the sanctity of his cause above all others. This meant, Borden said, that in Milosevic's own mind "he couldn't commit a war crime because everything he did, by definition, was in self-defence."

Likewise, Milosevic's inability to discern the erosion of his power base meant that he allowed the elections to go forward. When the outcome of the vote indicated that he had been trounced at the polls, a shell-shocked Milosevic huddled with his dwindling circle of supporters to come up with a face-saving strategy.

First, he refused to recognize the opposition's apparent first-round victory and called for a run-off vote. At the same time, in a rare television address that showed his anxiety, Milosevic denounced the opposition as puppets of the West who, if elected, would bring on Yugoslavia's dissolution.

But his gravest miscalculation, observers say, was the decision to have the nation's Constitutional Court annul the entire election and call for a new ballot, at an unspecified date that would have allowed Milosevic to cling to power.

"It looked like a master stroke," said Borden, adding, "The fact is, it was just one game too far …this last gambit energised the demonstrations. People were flabbergasted and furious."

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