[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/