Radio War Nerd #308 — The Serbian Red Berets, Part 1 (Patreon)

Guests: Boris Mamëz & Rey Katula, co-hosts The Empire Never Ended 

Recorded: December 9, 2021

You may have heard about the notorious Serbian warlord Arkan from his militia group's reign of terror in Bosnia in the 1990s. But few had heard of Serbia's Red Berets or understood the covert world that Arkan operated in —  the murky intersection of the ex-Yugoslavian criminal underworld, ultranationalist paramilitaries, the Serbian Deep State, and post-communist business interests. Hosts from The Empire Never Ended podcast join us to recover the little known history of the Red Berets, from their origins in the Yugoslavian security services' foreign assassination programs in the 1970s and 80s, through the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. 

Maps & Photos

*Former Yugoslavia republics

*Croatia, 1992-1995: Serbian Krajina & Serbian-held Eastern Slavonia

*Bosnia's Bihac pocket: Muslim enclave divided between Serb-friendly "Western Bosnia" (blue) and Bosnian government stronghold (green), surrounded by Serbian separatist regions

*Jovica Stanisic (right), secretive organizer of Red Berets; Franko Simatovic (center), Red Berets leader

*Legiya

*Arkan

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Check out The Empire Never Ended podcast. Follow TENE on Twitter.

Interlude music by Brendon Anderegg.

Total time: 1:45:51

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here