Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS 171
leadership. Their activities were energetically and purposefully coordinated by
Kučan. Rupel, who later fell out with Kučan, admits that without Kučan’s
“energy and steady coordinative work”, things might not have been so easy, 153
while Janša concedes at least that there was a “common exertion”. 154
Parliamentary president France Bučar also played a significant role, alongside
others.
The military operations followed the same plan everywhere. On the first day
the army formations marched in the direction of the frontier, on the second day
they became enmeshed in the net of the Slovenian Territorial Defense forces, and
on the third day they had to give up for the most part, while most of their barracks
remained blocked. There was only one moment during the whole confrontation
when the Slovenian leadership felt a certain nervousness. That was on 1/2 July,
when the army began to conduct aerial attacks against Slovenian targets, such as
television stations and communications centers. The Slovenes possessed no
weapons with which to defend themselves against high-flying aircraft.
Moreover, the passivity of the Croats became noticeable. 155
How did the army intervention come about Without question, it had its origin
with Prime Minister Marković who, as his press chief Tašić writes, wanted to
“discipline” Slovenia, to set a precedent for other “disobedient” republics. 156
This seems highhanded, for Marković could not dare to try anything similar with
the other republics, least of” all with Serbia. But Marković really thought of
himself now as the saviour of Yugoslavia.
During the night of 25/26 June the government adopted two decisions on
Marković’s initiative, the first of which was a declaration characterizing the
independence of Slovenia and Croatia as “illegal” and “contrary to the
constitution”; the government, it declared, had taken “measures” to restore the
“normal functioning of the state” and to make possible the “security of the
existing state and internal borders”, as well as the “fulfillment of the
international obligations of the state”. In a second “decision”, the government
spelled out what was entailed in the aforementioned “measures”, Here one finds
the following sentence at the end: “The federal Ministry of the Interior and the
federal Ministry of Defense will carry out this decree.” 157
This was clearly and incontestably an order to the army to secure the borders.
The army leadership had often claimed before that it stood under the state
presidency and not under the Prime Minister or his government. But now the
army was quite happy to act on the basis of a warrant from Marković’s
government.
The army’s actions were, in reality, directed largely against the border
crossings. This included also Brnik airport at Ljubljana. It was against this target
that the only truly dangerous army unit in Slovenia (which had been stationed in
Vrhnika) was sent; it consisted almost entirely of professional Serbian soldiers
from the tank brigade. Later, this unit would be transported through Croatia to
Banja Luka, on a Croatian train, and it took part shortly thereafter in the attack
on Croatian western Slavonia.