Muslim Rule in Serbia City Short-Lived

Whenever he was accused of trampling on democracy, Balkan strongman Slobodan Milosevic pointed to the Muslim districts of southwestern Serbia’s Sandzak region. There, Milosevic noted, his political and ethnic foes--the Muslim leaders of opposition parties--won municipal elections last fall and were allowed to take office and rule.

But no more. Last month, with hardly a whimper of international outcry, Milosevic unleashed his police and army to take over the government of the Muslim-controlled city of Novi Pazar, throw the mayor out of office and dissolve the elected city council.

“It was a coup,” said Sulejman Ugljanin, leader of a coalition of Sandzak’s principal Muslim political parties. After years in forced exile, Ugljanin was allowed to run for federal parliament last year--and he won--but a 4-year-old, dormant indictment on subversion charges was suddenly revived at the same time that the Novi Pazar officials were being corralled.

The crackdown appears to be part of Milosevic’s return to nationalism as he moves to consolidate power in his new position as president of the rump Yugoslavia and as he seeks to have a handpicked successor replace him as president of Serbia.

It sets a dangerous precedent, diplomats say, because if Milosevic gets away with steamrolling Sandzak, he can do the same elsewhere.

Milosevic may also be attempting to provoke a boycott of next month’s Serbian presidential elections by Sandzak voters, diplomats say, which would allow his supporters to sweep the region.

Life for Muslims in the Sandzak has become more difficult since the collapse of the old Yugoslavia and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. An estimated 70,000 Muslims fled or were expelled from the area, Ugljanin said, and harassment and intimidation continue.

With last fall’s parliamentary and municipal elections, however, the Muslims for the first time won real governmental power. It was limited by the fact that Milosevic’s Serb-dominated Socialist Party still controlled courts, treasuries and police, but it was a beginning, Ugljanin and others said.

And, as could have been expected, the Muslim coalition quickly began to replace Socialists with its own people--infuriating officials in Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital.

That was when the backlash began.

Here in Novi Pazar, Muslims see the Milosevic crackdown as the latest blow to efforts to preserve their community in a hostile, rump Yugoslavia--made up of Serbia and Montenegro.

The abuses by Milosevic’s agents and the attractive pull of Muslim Bosnia next door are feeding an exodus of Muslims from Sandzak, many replaced by hard-line Bosnian Serb nationalists fleeing Bosnia.

International support for Ugljanin and the Novi Pazar cause has been slow in coming, in part because the Muslim officials, once in power, exhibited some of the autocratic tendencies, lack of political tolerance and penchant for nepotism that were typical of their opponents.

“We are in the jaws of the lion, a nationalist lion in Belgrade,” said Rasim Ljajic, a Muslim dissident who split from Ugljanin’s faction. “You need a lot of careful political sense. Muslims only make up 2.7% of Serbia’s population. But certain politicians are acting as though we had as many Muslims in Serbia as Chinese in China. . . . The lack of contact with reality has been counterproductive.”

Wilkinson was recently on assignment in Novi Pazar.