BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- In the often flashy and violent Belgrade underworld, where gold chains shimmer, guns blaze and gangsters are revered by aimless young men, Darko Asanin was a hoodlum who stood out.
Unlike many of Belgrade's "wise guys," Asanin disliked publicity, shedding his alleged drug-dealing past by acquiring a string of seemingly legitimate businesses. He ran a mirror factory, a casino that catered to the political elite and a cafe called the Coliseum.
But this summer, Asanin's picture hit the front pages for the wrong reason. He was gunned down in his cafe June 30 while watching a World Cup soccer match on television. The gunman got away, to nobody's surprise.
Asanin was another fatality in Belgrade's long-running gang battles, another symbol of Belgrade's rotten core.
The city, physically untouched by wars that destroyed the former Yugoslavia, earned its scars from years of international isolation and the rise of what some have called a "thug-ocracy." While gangsters fight for turfon the streets, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic rules the country firmly, outfoxing opponents and fanning the embers of Serbian nationalism.
Caught in a vise between the gangsters and the politicians is a population grown weary and apathetic after lost battles, economic sanctions and shattered political dreams. War may be flaring in the province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by 9 to 1, but few in Belgrade seem to care.
"Every year is worse and worse," says Vesna Pesic, leader of the Civil Alliance, an opposition political party. "This will be the worst point of our history. We are more and more crazy."
This is a journey through Belgrade, population 1.5 million, where the Danube meets the Sava River, and where hope is crushed by Balkan politics.
Serbia's lost generation
Warrior and student, protester and fledgling historian, Vladimir Dobrosavljevic is part of Belgrade's lost generation.
He yearns for change yet sees his city stagnant. He wants to earn an honest wage, yet he watches as Belgrade's gangster elite tool around town in Range Rovers and Mercedes-Benzes, shop for Versace suits and dance the night away in opulent discos where patrons are asked to check their weapons at the door.
"We are the Generation X of Serbia," says Dobrosavljevic, 27, sitting in the stifling heat of a cafe at the University of Belgrade. "We're not like Americans. We can't just live with the music of REM and Nirvana, and watch the movie 'Reality Bites.' "
For a few months in the winter of 1996-1997, there was hope in the streets. Thousands of students and workers, homemakers and teachers, marched every night against Milosevic's regime. They were trying to force the authorities to accept election results that gave an opposition coalition named Together control of Belgrade and other local towns.
Dobrosavljevic, who fought in the Yugoslav army in 1991 at the beginning of the Balkan civil war, was among 13 student leaders who shepherded the protest.
"It was such a great feeling," he says. "It was the best period of my life. I really felt great. I felt strong. We really believed we could win."
Milosevic's government backed down -- and Together was given the local victory. But within months, the coalition collapsed as the politicians squabbled and fought over the electoral spoils.
"It all went to the wind," Dobrosavljevic says. "In one moment, we thought we had won. But now, I don't think so."
Dobrosavljevic is back in school, studying modern Yugoslavian history, joining an opposition political party, hoping that the country can break with the past. More than 200,000 others, mostly young and educated, have left the country. Dobrosavljevic stays.
"If every one of us left, who would turn on the lights?" he asks.
'So many crocodiles'
Marko Nicovic was once Belgrade's top police officer, the head of the city's criminal unit until he quit in 1992. Now, he's an attorney and legal gadfly, with a bellyful of anger and an office wall crammed with international citations.
"Just think how it is to survive in this jungle," Nicovic says. "It's a small lake and there are so many crocodiles. And every day is worse. The economy is smaller and smaller. And there are a lot of angry young men out there."
Nicovic says it was the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s that transformed the city and gave the gangsters a foothold.
He says the criminals -- in cahoots with the politicians -- got rich on war profiteering when the country was hit with U.N. economic sanctions.
The gangsters did the dirty work for the regime. They ran guns, cigarettes, stolen cars and gasoline. Nicovic says some even set up paramilitary units that fought in the wars.
Nicovic says the gangsters continue to take their cut of the economy, from "protection" of shops and cafes, to drug-trafficking to ownership of casinos. He claims they even take a percentage of the import trade.
"They've destroyed the economy for the next generation," he says.
The gangsters are also devouring their own.
For the most part, Belgrade is a safe city, unless you're a "wise guy." There have been 40 major gang hits in the past seven
years, according to observers of the mob wars. In virtually every case, the observers say, no one was arrested.
"Zombietown," a documentary made in 1995 by independent media outlet B92, illustrates the pace of the killings. Three of the young mobsters interviewed were murdered before the film was released. Three others have been killed since.
Last year, two of Serbia's governing elite -- who some claim had gangster connections -- were killed: Zoran "Kundak" Todorovic and Gen. Radovan "Badza" Stojicic.
Todorovic was the secretary-general of the Yugoslav United Left, the party run by Mira Markovic, Milosevic's wife. Stojicic was the deputy minister of police.
At Stojicic's funeral, Milosevic stood at the graveside near Zeljko Raznatovic, who is wanted for robbery in several European countries.
Raznatovic, known as "Arkan," was once leader of a Serbian paramilitary group, the man CNN dubbed, "the war lord who brought ethnic cleansing to Eastern Europe."
Now, Arkan oversees Yugoslavia's championship soccer team.
Arkan drives around town in a sleek, black Ford Expedition van. His house looks like a small hotel, with a candy shop attached to the back. He owns a luxurious casino. His wife, Ceca, is a popular folk singer, with a string of hit albums and a perfume line.
Arkan's world is pretty swell.
He shows up for work daily at the headquarters of the Obilic soccer team, which is named after the Serbian hero from the Serbs' losing battle against the Ottoman Turks at Kosovo Polje in 1389.
Officially, Arkan is Obilic's "special adviser." His wife controls 49 percent of the holding company that owns the team. Controlling the rest is a board of directors that includes some of Belgrade's big powers in banking, law and business.
"We are the first capitalist soccer team in Yugoslavia," says Zoran Petrovic, 30, the general manager.
All around the city are posters that declare: "I Don't Want War." But there isn't much of an anti-war movement. People are tired of protest, of fighting.
Milosevic and his regime are 0-for-2 in Balkan wars in the 1990s. The bid to create a "Greater Serbia" from the remnants of the former Yugoslavia has left a truncated state that is an international pariah.
"This time, Milosevic is right," one journalist says of the war in Kosovo. "But after 10 years, it doesn't matter anymore. Nobody cares."
Kosovo is a war of professionals and guerrillas, Yugoslav soldiers and Serbian police vs. the Kosovo Liberation Army. The battles that rage in Serbia's southern province -- a four-hour drive from Belgrade -- might as well be in another country for all the talk they ignite in cafes or in the official news media.
The peace posters are beginning to fray. The activists are on vacation.
'We're the losers'
"The Wounds" is the latest film sensation. It's about two friends, Pinki and Svaba. And it's about Belgrade's underside. The two teens grow up in the 1990s, a time of war and decadence. They idolize a local gangster. They turn on their parents, who sit anesthetized in front of the television watching state propaganda. The teens yearn for an easy life of fast cars, women and guns. And they begin to live this Belgrade dream -- and nightmare.
"Heroes? We have none. We're the losers," says Uros Duric, an artist and actor who has a small role in the film.
Atidza Borovac is one of Belgrade's losers. She's 46 and looks a good 20 years older. She works as a cleaner in a state factory but hasn't been paid since April.
So at 5 o'clock every Saturday morning, she takes what meager possessions she can scrape together and tries to sell them at a black market set up in a garbage-strewn sand pit beneath a railway bridge. She lays out used pencils, a telephone, broken toys. She is asking pennies for her possessions.
"God is killing me," she says.
On the surface, the economy looks good. People swarm through Belgrade's cobblestoned streets. They sip coffee in pleasant cafes. They treat their children to popcorn and cotton candy.
But beneath the surface, the economy is a disaster, hemmed in by an outer wall of international sanctions that prevent Yugoslavia from joining the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The country's balance of payments information is secret, but things are so bleak that the government announced it will set up a state monopoly to import coffee and tobacco, the true fuel of the Balkans.
The government is months behind on paying teachers and pensioners. Workers at state industries show up for phantom jobs and go months without receiving meager paychecks.
Inflation is running at 40 percent to 50 percent annually, which is actually an improvement from 1993, when the rate was off the charts and 500 billion dinars couldn't buy much more than a banana.
Yet its business as usual for the political elite. Serbia's prime minister runs Progress Gas, which imports natural gas from Russia. The speaker of the Serbian parliament oversees Jugopetrol, the big oil company. A government minister heads Simpo, the country's big furniture and housewares company.
Meanwhile, the people soldier on.
Beba Omrovic and Tanje Kujacic, 25-year-olds who wouldn't look out of place shopping at a mall in America, are hunting for suntan lotion and makeup in an outdoor market the size of four football fields. Among the millions of items available are rolls of toilet paper, counterfeit Nike shirts, wrenches, knockoff CDs, even fly fishing rods.
"Everything is so expensive in the city center. Here, we can afford what we need," says Kujacic.
Omrovic says people in Belgrade are simply trying to live and trying to forget politics. "It's much easier not to think," she says.
The two then break out into an impromptu debate.
"We are proud of our country," says Kujacic, a medical student.
"Proud of what?" says Omrovic, a secretary.
"I love my country," Kujacic says.
"I love my country, too," Omrovic responds. "But I'm wasting my time."
Pub Date: 8/09/98