[The present-day characters of some other states and territories have
been decisively shaped by war crimes, even if their very existence
predates those crimes. Much of the ethnic and social fabric of today's
Kosovo has been created since the 1999 NATO intervention, created by
organized campaigns of murder and plunder aimed at chasing out the
Serbs, Roma, and other minorities. It is also fair to say that these
campaigns were made possible at least partly by the war crimes
committed by the Milosevic regime during the 1998-1999 campaign
against the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK).]
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=115&NrSection=2&NrArticle=14041&tpid=8
TRANSITIONS ONLINE
by TOL
16 May 2005
Yugoslav Successor States: Founded on War Crimes?
War crimes were an integral to the birth of some of the states,
entities, and provinces that emerged from the former Yugoslavia. That
should not prevent them normalizing relations.
A wave of strong, though entirely predictable, reactions was triggered
in Croatia last week at news from The Hague. When the news reached
Zagreb that the chief Balkan war-crimes prosecutor was seeking to
expand the indictment against two Croatian generals to name over a
thousand officials as members of the "joint criminal enterprise,"
veterans' associations, ordinary Croats, as well as politicians across
the political spectrum called the move unacceptable.
The indictment set out by Carla del Ponte relates to the operation
"Oluja" (Storm), carried out by Croatian forces in August 1995.
The critics charged that the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was seeking to criminalize an operation that
most Croats view as not only legitimate action to liberate occupied
territories, but also as heroic. Florence Hartmann, the chief
prosecutor's press spokesperson, denied that the proposed expanded
indictments amount to a condemnation of Oluja as a whole. She
maintained, however, that the prosecution had to make clear that some
of the atrocities committed in Oluja were organized.
But this kind of talk does not convince Croatia, a country that is
preparing to mark the tenth anniversary of an operation that now
occupies the central part of its genesis mythology. It is probably
safe to say that Prime Minister Ivo Sanader truly spoke for the nation
when he said that the prosecutor's plans amount to "crossing the
line."
"Oluja was a brilliant, historic, military and police operation that
we can be proud of, the operation that liberated central parts of
[Serbian-] occupied Croatia," Sander said.
Chief Prosecutor del Ponte submitted the expanded indictment against
generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac for approval by the court on 6
May. The move followed an order from the judges for the prosecutors to
clarify who exactly were the members of the "joint criminal
enterprise" that prosecutors accuse of masterminding and carrying out
the expulsion of ethnic Serbs from Croatia. Almost the entire
population of the Serb-held Krajina region â an estimated 150,000
people â fled Croatia during the Oluja operation.
Other members of the criminal enterprise included late Croatian
president Franjo Tudjman and late defense minister Gojko Susak, as
well as fugitive general Ante Gotovina. The amended indictment adds
another two deceased officials, generals Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir
Cervenko, as well as members of the Croatian defense and interior
ministries, the governing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and local
officials. Even though they would be named as members of the same
criminal enterprise if the amended indictment is accepted by the
court, they will not be indicted by the ICTY. As a part of the Hague's
winding-down strategy prosecutors hope that local courts in the
countries of the former Yugoslavia will bring indictments against many
lower-ranking officials. The ICTY plans to complete all ongoing trials
by 2010.
Shouldn't last week's loud reactions by Zagreb be seen as a bit
surprising, though, seeing that the ICTY prosecution had made clear
long ago that even the "father of the nation" himself, Tudjman, would
have been indicted had he not died? Haven't we been here many times
before? Haven't all the previous Oluja-related indictments contained
descriptions of the operation that Zagreb found unacceptable? Hasn't
every Croatian government, as well as most opposition parties, always
protested the view held by the ICTY prosecution, as well as much of
the outside world, that Oluja was, at least partly, about expelling
the local Serbs? Haven't the prosecutors always responded that this
view does not call into question the legitimacy and the legality of
the operation itself? Above all, haven't the Croats grown tired of
arguing with the rest of the world over Oluja?
The most basic reason why the Croats have not and are unlikely to tire
of this game any time soon is in the enormous emotional investment
that went into bringing about an independent Croatia. Obviously, many
suffered personal losses. But even those who didn't, participated in
the drama, at least as very involved spectators whose cheers
influenced the action on the pitch. It was a drama in which they were
protagonists and it is a drama they cherish and are able to relive.
It was also a drama that established the world in which they live
today, a world in which they are undoubtedly stakeholders. While many
are not thrilled by the condition of today's Croatia, few are prepared
to tolerate attempts to paint the making of the independent Croatia in
any kind of unfavorable colors, precisely because Croatia's making was
of their own making.
Other elements that do and will keep this issue alive have to do more
with intrinsic contradictions contained in any judicial, political, or
social attempts to deal with the region's recent past. When they
protested last week that the proposed expanded indictment against
Markac and Cermak implied that Croatia is a state founded on war
crimes, Croatian officials hit the core of a problem that a number of
states, entities, and provinces that came into being in the process of
Yugoslavia's dissolution will have to face for decades to come. Put
simply, it can indeed be argued that war crimes were an integral part
of their genesis.
Some political entities were literally made possible thanks to war
crimes. This is true in particular of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian
Serb entity which came into being as its territory was systematically
emptied of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian populations. Similar
methods gave birth to Herceg-Bosna, the Bosnian Croat wartime entity
pieced together of territories rid of most of its Bosniak and Serb
residents. And the same goes for the Republic of Serbian Krajina â the
very entity blown away by Oluja â which had been cleansed of most
ethnic Croats.
The present-day characters of some other states and territories have
been decisively shaped by war crimes, even if their very existence
predates those crimes. Much of the ethnic and social fabric of today's
Kosovo has been created since the 1999 NATO intervention, created by
organized campaigns of murder and plunder aimed at chasing out the
Serbs, Roma, and other minorities. It is also fair to say that these
campaigns were made possible at least partly by the war crimes
committed by the Milosevic regime during the 1998-1999 campaign
against the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK).
While there is no evidence that the Bosniak leadership ever planned
mass crimes to ethnically cleanse the Bosniak-majority territories of
Bosnia, numerous war crimes, albeit of a comparatively smaller
magnitude, committed on the territories controlled by them undoubtedly
contributed to the flight of the Serbs and Croats from those
territories during the 1992-1995 war.
While Croatia is a centuries-old country that would have continued to
exist with or without war crimes, its internal character was
profoundly changed by war crimes, or more precisely, by policies that
could only be implemented by war crimes. Tudjman and his aides never
believed in an independent Croatia in which Croats and ethnic Serbs,
who before the war constituted some 12 percent of the population,
would peacefully coexist.
Tudjman frequently made his views clear in public. One of the first
moves he made after winning power in 1990 was to get rid of the
constitutional clause that mentioned the Serbs in Croatia as a
"constituent" element of the republic. Tudjman simply viewed the
influence, numbers, and geographical spread of the ethnic Serbs in
Croatia as an obstacle to Croatian independence and left an
astonishing body of evidence about what he intended to do about it.
The Hague prosecutors may have an extremely easy ride demonstrating
that Tudjman and his many aides viewed Oluja as an operation aimed at
chasing out Serbian civilians. Among other things, Tudjman taped many
meetings in which such plans were discussed. When Oluja achieved what
Tudjman obviously saw as his historic mission, he told his generals,
"We solved the Serbian question. There will no longer be 12 percent
Serbs ... as there used to be. Three or 5 percent of them won't
endanger the Croatian state."
What makes this complicated is that, strictly speaking, Tudjman's view
of Croatia's Serbs as an obstacle to independence was not wrong.
Nearly all of them, of course, preferred to remain in Yugoslavia. In
the early 1990s, Tudjman must have feared that the Serbs and many
Croats who were not excessively unhappy with Yugoslavia might make his
dream unrealistic. What made his position easier is the fact that many
Serbs in Croatia and elsewhere also saw the whole proposition over
Croatia as a zero-sum game and, in fact, tried to preempt Tudjman's
independence plans by forming the Republic of Serbian Krajina. In
other words, a harmonious, multiethnic Croatia was never advocated by
anyone of great influence. From the perspective of Tudjman and his
Serbian opponents, the only independent Croatia possible appeared to
be a Croatia with a radically reduced number of Serbs and nearly all
Serbs chased out of positions of influence.
Persuading the traumatized Krajina Serbs to flee Croatia was not that
difficult in 1995, but it still took a series of carefully planned
actions, which were always going to result in many atrocities that
international law class as war crimes. But does this make Croatia a
state founded on war crimes, as many Croats say the Hague prosecutors
allege? And if so, can the same be said of much of the rest of the
region? Furthermore, can it be argued that many Balkan communities
live in collective denial about their own past? And can the ICTY truly
be believed when it says that its indictments do not undermine
operations such as Oluja if they allege that organized war crimes were
at their heart?
One can easily give â and even indulge in â easy answers to any such
questions, simply because it is blatantly obvious that much of the
region's present character has been directly shaped by war crimes and
that many of the region's movers and shakers in the 1990s were indeed
war criminals. But it is also obvious that no simple answer is likely
to be helpful to anyone. In fact, proper answers are likely to be very
complex and probably best when served cold by trained historians.
This does not mean that the ICTY should preoccupy itself with these
sorts of questions. The court deals with individual criminal
responsibility and should not hesitate to establish such
responsibility at any level when it can, regardless of how the acts
would be viewed in the foundation stones of this or that state or
entity or whether the indictments and rulings would insult different
patriotic sensibilities or even strengthen extremists, as it is argued
by many analysts in relation to the proposed expansion of the
Markac-Cermak indictment.
But the ICTY will not have the last word in the region's quest to make
sense of its recent past and move on, though its rulings may have a
cumulative effect on the region's thinking. The truth is, though, that
politicians, academics, and ordinary people are unlikely to even start
agreeing on the big questions of the 1990s in the near future. This
should not, however, prevent them from fully normalizing their
relations. With enough will, political will in the first place, such
issues can be overcome without necessarily being resolved. Balkan
societies should look at many European examples of good neighbors who
have learned to live happily with their profoundly different takes on
not-so-distant shared histories. In other words, Balkan societies
should be encouraged to start viewing their disagreements and
different views of the past pretty much as givens, or facts of life
that, however controversial, should not be insisted upon for the sake
of it.
Politicians have a very specific responsibility here. They should not
try to politicize such issues, no matter how attractive the possible
gains appear to be. While there is little doubt that Sanader and many
other politicians who spoke on the proposed enlarged indictment voiced
sincerely held views, they also seemed to view the news from the Hague
as a perfect ball that they couldn't help but volley into their
opponents' goal ahead of the past weekend's local elections. This does
not seem to have influenced the election results at all. As expected,
the contest showed a moderate downward trend for Sanader's HDZ and
some gains for the left-of-center parties.
ADVERTISEMENT
powered by
Copyright ï 2005 Transitions Online.
All rights reserved.
ISSN 1214-1615
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BalkanNews/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
