The Sandžak Muslim militia was established in Sandžak and eastern Herzegovina in Axis occupied Yugoslavia between April or June and August 1941 during World War II. It was under control of the Independent State of Croatia until September 1941, when Italian forces gradually put it under their command and established additional units not only in Sandžak, but in eastern Herzegovina as well. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 it was put under German control, while some of its units were merged with three battalions of Albanian collaborationist troops to establish the "SS Polizei-Selbstschutz-Regiment Sandschak" under command of the senior Waffen SS officer Karl von Krempler.
The Sandžak Muslim militia had around 2,000 men in standing forces and additional auxiliary forces on local level. Its notable commanders include Sulejman Pačariz, Hasan Zvizdić, Husein Rovčanin, Ćazim Sijarić, Selim Juković, Bilall Dreshaj, Ćamil Hasanagić and Galjan Lukač.
It was one of three armed groups, besides the Chetniks and Yugoslav Partisans, that operated in Sandžak during the Second World War and engaged in violent internecine combat. The militia participated in the suppression of the Uprising in Montenegro. After the suppression of the uprising, the militia continued to fight against Yugoslav Partisans, but some of its units also carried on with attacks on Serbs in Sandžak and eastern Herzegovina. According to German and Croatian sources, the size of Muslim militia in April 1943 was between 8,000 and 12,000 men.
Background
The Sandžak is a mountainous region that lies along the border between modern-day Serbia and Montenegro. A significant Muslim minority has formed part of the population of the region since the Ottoman Empire annexation of the Serbian Despotate in 1459. A history of hatred, frequent harassment and occasional violence directed towards the Sandžak Muslims by their Serb neighbors meant that they had generally maintained a system of mutual protection to keep watch over their communities and property. Prior to the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Sandžak had been joined to Bosnia and Herzegovina under Ottoman rule.
Between 1929 and 1941, the Sandžak had been part of the Zeta Banovina (province) of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, whose boundaries, like those of five of the other eight banovina, were gerrymandered to ensure a Serb majority which would protect the interests of the Serbian ruling elite of Yugoslavia. In the 1931 census, the counties of Bijelo Polje, Deževa, Mileševa, Nova Varos, Pljevlja, Priboj, Sjenica, and Štavica had a combined population of 204,068, with 43 per cent (87,939) identifying as Muslims (Bosniak or Albanian), a small percentage as Albanian, and 56.5 per cent (115,260) being Orthodox Serbs or Montenegrins.
Initial reactions to the invasion
In April 1941, Germany and its Axis allies invaded and occupied Yugoslavia. German troops from the 8th and 11th Panzer Divisions entered the Sandžak on 16 April, and had occupied the whole region by 19 April. In all cases county officials and gendarmes surrendered peacefully, but held no demonstrations of support for the Germans until they arrived. In Sjenica, Nova Varos, Priboj, Prijepolje and Bijelo Polje the streets were deserted when the Germans arrived, with shops closed and most people staying inside their homes.
In Novi Pazar parts of the community welcomed the Germans when they became aware of their approach from Raška. When the Germans arrived on 17 April, German flags bearing the swastika were being flown, and a welcoming committee greeted the troops, including the inter-war mayor of the town, Aćif Hadžiahmetović, and Stjepan Fišer, Ahmet Daca, and Ejup Ljajić. In Pljevlja some elements of the community, including the county and municipal mayors, met the Germans at the outskirts of the town and held a reception to welcome them.
In Prijepolje, a meeting of prominent Serb and Muslim men was called before the Germans arrived, and during which the Serb Sreten Vukosavljević urged Serbs and Muslims to maintain good relations and treat the occupation as temporary. Only the mayor met the Germans when they arrived in town. The Germans withdrew to Pljevlja for a few days, and patrols each consisting of one Serb and one Muslim maintained law and order.
On 19 April, the Germans called a meeting of Muslim notables from Novi Pazar, Sjenica, and Tutin. The meeting was held the following day in Kosovska Mitrovica, and also included representatives of the Muslim and Albanian communities of Kosovska Mitrovica, Vučitrn, Podujevo, Pristina, Peć, Istok and Drenica. The 60 delegates at the meeting were addressed by the commander of the German 60th Infantry Division Generalleutnant Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt, who told the assembly that the Germans had liberated the Albanians from the Serbs, and that he was now inviting the Albanians to take over the administration of the Kosovo region. He also said that during his division's advance from Skopje (the capital of modern-day Macedonia) to Kosovska Mitrovica they had seen that the Serb Chetniks had killed 3,000 Albanians. He stated that the Kosovo region would be part of the German-occupied territory of Serbia, under a German-dominated government in Belgrade. This statement was received in stony silence. Eberhardt then told the group that all Serbs in the Kosovo area would eventually be resettled in Serbia, and Kosovo would then contain only Albanians, Muslims and Catholics. The meeting then discussed the situation, and decided that the former Yugoslav structures and authorities in the region would be disarmed and dismantled, and that all Serb officials would be dismissed.
As soon as the Sandžak Muslim leaders returned to their communities from the meeting in Kosovska Mitrovica, they installed members of their inner circles in the towns of Novi Pazar, Sjenica, and Tutin, including the town guard, courts, tax administration and postal services. This was then extended to Muslim villages in those districts. In Bijelo Polje and Pljevlja, the pre-war district and municipal mayors remained in place. Štavica district was transferred to Italian-controlled Albania.
After a few days, rumours surfaced in Prijepolje that Serb Chetniks were approaching the town, and the Muslim population prepared to arm themselves in self-defence. A munition accident occurred at a meeting called to distribute weapons, and four were killed and more wounded. The Germans soon arrived to investigate, and were convinced by pro-German Muslims that Serbs had intentionally caused the explosion. They rounded up non-Muslims, as well as at least one Muslim communist, and lined them up against a wall. Other Muslims intervened to save them, telling the Germans the explosion was caused by negligence, not the Serbs. The Germans only disarmed the Yugoslav gendarmerie in Tutin and nearby Crkvine. In all other centres they allowed the gendarmes to retain their weapons.
Throughout the Sandžak, the communists successfully convinced a portion of the population not to surrender their weapons to the Germans as they had been ordered, but their efforts were opposed by pro-German elements of the community who encouraged the handing-in of arms. The Germans initially allowed officers of the defeated Yugoslav Army to return to their homes, so long as they reported regularly to the local garrison. This was intended to ensure that the officers were able to be easily located and interned.
Partition of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia was soon partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbors, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Italians also occupied Montenegro with the intention of setting up a vassal state, and the borders of this territory included most of the Sandžak. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the Ustaše-led puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war Banovina Croatia, along with rest of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. The Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians occupied other parts of Yugoslavian territory.
Germany annexed the northern parts of present-day Slovenia and stationed occupation troops in the northern half of the NDH. The remaining territory, which consisted of Serbia proper, the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat was occupied by the Germans and placed under the administration of a German military government.
The struggle over the Sandžak German-Italian demarcation line The demarcation line between areas of German and Italian responsibility through occupied Yugoslavia was determined at a meeting of the German and Italian foreign ministers in Vienna on 21–22 April 1941. Two days later, Adolf Hitler set the initial boundary (known as the Vienna Line) through the Sandžak along the line Priboj-Novi Pazar, with both those towns falling on the German side of the line. The Germans were not quick to hand over parts of the region to the Italians, maintaining their occupation troops throughout the Sandžak, and initially only allowing the Italians to garrison Bijelo Polje. They were not confident in the ability of the Italians to secure the region, and did not want to rely on Serb collaborationists, at least initially. While they were able to establish co-operation with local Muslim authorities in Novi Pazar and Tutin, matters were not so straightforward in other towns of the region. Key German interests in the Sandžak included mineral exploitation and the important route towards Greece through the Ibar valley.
NDH designs on the Sandžak Ustaše ideologists considered the Sandžak an integral part of NDH, and they wanted to occupy cities in Montenegro and the Sandžak, thereby establishing a common border with Bulgaria.
On 29 April, a platoon of Ustaše troops arrived in Prijepolje, where they were welcomed by local Muslims. The platoon commander gave a short speech and addressed a meeting at a school, declaring that the Sandžak had been annexed to the NDH, and telling all the local officials they must swear an oath to their new country. Part of the platoon was stationed at the railway station at Uvac near Sjenica, and part was sent to Priboj.
The aspirations of the Ustaše were given additional impetus by the Sandžak Muslims, who sent a letter to the Poglavnik (leader) of the NDH, Ante Pavelić on 30 April 1941. The letter, sent via Sarajevo, stated that the Sandžak was both economically and historically part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and asked that the Sandžak be incorporated into the NDH. It also asked that Pavelić send a detachment of Ustaše militia to every district of the Sandžak, stating that such action had the full support of the Germans. The letter was signed "on behalf of the districts of the Sandžak" without specifying which districts were represented, although of the 38 signatories, Pljevlja and Prijepolje supplied ten each, six were from Sjenica, there were five each from Priboj and Bijelo Polje, and two from Nova Varoš. There were no signatories from Novi Pazar or Tutin. During the period immediately after the invasion, there were several opposing currents among the Muslims of the Sandžak. Some wanted to join the NDH, others wanted to join the Italian protectorate of Albania, a group wanted to ally themselves with the pro-German Hadžiahmetović in Novi Pazar, and yet others wanted to work with the separatist Montenegrin "Greens". This divergence of views was reflected in a meeting at Bijelo Polje, which favoured joining the NDH, although a significant minority supported aligning themselves with Hadžiahmetović. In the eastern part of the Sandžak, there were also significant numbers of Albanians, who were agitating for the enlargement of neighboring Albania to include large areas of the Sandžak.
NDH gendarmerie moves in