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Yugoslavia Organization for Internal Security
The Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order
was the highest government organization responsible for internal
security matters. Its chairman was the president of the
collective State Presidency, and its membership included the
federal secretary for internal affairs, the federal secretary for
national defense, and other military, party, and civilian
officials. Under the Constitution, the State Presidency has the
authority to order the use of the armed forces in peacetime to
ensure internal security. It can suspend any provision in the
Constitution if necessary for defense and security during war or
imminent danger of war.
Considerable police and paramilitary power was concentrated
in the Federal Secretariat for Internal Affairs, which supervised
the work of subordinate secretariats for internal affairs in the
republics and autonomous provinces. Besides the SDB, the national
secretariat included the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor,
who in turn controlled public prosecutors in the republics.
The SDB was responsible for identifying and neutralizing
subversive elements regarded as threats to the constitutional
order and the socialist self-management system. Both violent
groups and peaceful dissidents were included in this broad
category. Plainclothes SDB agents investigated and monitored such
groups and infiltrated their ranks. One of the SDB's most
effective weapons was the concept of social self-protection. It
was the equivalent of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) in
internal security matters. Article 173 of the Constitution
declared the duty of all citizens to participate in social selfprotection by reporting immediately to the SDB their knowledge of
"hostile activities" including ordinary crime, political
offenses, and terrorism.
The Federal Secretariat for Internal Affairs also controlled
a federal paramilitary force, the People's Militia, which
numbered more than 15,000 troops. This force operated numerous
BOV-M armored vehicles equipped with machine guns, water cannons,
smoke and tear gas launchers for crowd control and riot
situations, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. These
internal security troops were well paid, heavily indoctrinated,
experienced, and reliable. They could be deployed in times of
political unrest or disorder when the local police were expected
to side with the populace against federal authorities. The
People's Militia provided security for the 1984 Winter Olympics
in Sarajevo. The federal secretariat also controlled 15,000
troops in border guard units. In coastal areas, the border guards
operated sixteen patrol boats in 1990.
The secretariats for internal affairs in the republics and
autonomous provinces controlled the militia (regular police)
forces in their territory. In 1990 there were an estimated 40,000
professional law enforcement officers. They were responsible for
maintaining government communications, issuing travel documents
to citizens, and registering foreign residents. The average
militia officer was male, twenty-two years of age, and had
completed his secondary education in special schools operated by
the federal secretariat for internal affairs. Select militia
officers were later sent for a university education.
The militia were organized into stations and substations in
larger cities. They were involved in routine law enforcement as
well as more sensitive cases involving ethnic groups. Cases
ranged from physical attacks and harassment to homicide. In
Pristina, site of a major university and a center of Albanian
ethnic dissidence, every confrontation with authority had the
potential to erupt into large disturbances between ethnic
communities. In 1990 that city had seven militia stations and
four substations, serving a population of 400,000.
Data as of December 1990
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