My Tea with Arkan the Henchman

By MASSIMO CALABRESI/BELGRADE

Zeljko Raznatovic, a.k.a. "Arkan," may be the world's most notorious ethnic cleanser. In 1991, as the former Yugoslavia broke apart, his paramilitary "Tigers" pioneered the terror tactics that are the hallmark of the Balkan wars. Last week American and British officials said he and his men have unsheathed that same vengeful violence against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population. And if his terrible status needed any further certification, it came from Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, who last Wednesday announced an indictment against Arkan for war crimes committed in the Balkans from 1991 to '95.

"She's a bitch," Arkan said last Friday night, sipping tea with me in the ostentatious lobby of the Hyatt Hotel in Belgrade. "I didn't see any Serb doing any crime." As for the latest accusations, Arkan denies he has even been in Kosovo and declares that his soldiers are in training only in case NATO deploys ground troops. He denies that the province is being purposefully cleared of its ethnic Albanian population. So why are refugees streaming across Kosovo's borders? "Because you started bombing," he says.

Born in 1952 in Brezice, Slovenia, the son of a Yugoslav air force colonel, Arkan left the country as a teenager. Moving across Europe for the next 20 years, he racked up a formidable criminal record: his seven outstanding Interpol warrants include armed robbery and other crimes. In the '70s he became affiliated with the Yugoslav authorities, and by the mid '80s he was back in Belgrade, working for the state security service. In the late '80s he became the leader of a Belgrade soccer team's fan club, a group that was transformed into his paramilitary unit.

The crimes Arkan and his men are believed to have committed in Croatia and Bosnia are chilling. In August 1991 his troops cut their teeth by driving civilian Croats from the city of Vukovar, looting and burning along the way. Arkan and his men stand accused of having tortured, mutilated and killed Muslims in the northeast Bosnian town of Bijeljina in April 1992. And in Zvornik that same month, his troops cleared the town of Muslims, extorting money from civilians for safe passage out of the hell they had created.

For years Milosevic and his myrmidons insisted that Arkan acted alone. But Arkan has begun to hint that such may not be the case, that Milosevic did know about his activities. "When I was in Croatia, I was under the command of the Yugoslav army," Arkan says. "In Bosnia I was under the command of the MUP [Interior Ministry]." The implication: he was acting under Milosevic's orders.

What does the future hold for Arkan? "If you are coming with the ground troops, I will be fighting you. If you don't come with the ground troops, I will continue to do my regular life."

--By Massimo Calabresi/Belgrade