Another Bomb Explosion in Zagreb

AIM Zagreb, March 17, 2001

"We are obviously embarking upon a new stage of urban terrorism" said Dr Drazen Lalic, Professor of sociology at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Sciences, after a kilo and a half of military dynamite, known under the name trotyl, exploded on March 16, in front of the city administration building at 9,30 a.m. The scene was quite horrible while Croats were able to see such pictures until now only on TV in foreign-political reports from Belfast or Beirut. The flame was spreading in all directions, cars were burning, there was smoke everywhere while fireman were trying to save what could be saved and the Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic appeared at the explosion site accompanied by the police.

Incidentally, several minutes before the dynamite went off, Milan Bandic signed an order on the allocation of 580 thousand kunas (around DM 150 thousand) from the city treasury for the reconstruction of the recently mined monument to Partisan heroes at the Zagreb cemetery of Mirogoj.

That monument was skillfully demolished in a terrorist action similar to the one carried out in front of the Zagreb City Hall when ten cars were blown up. Only thanks to luck and someone's calmness, there were no casualties on Thursday when demobilised solider Zvonko Stojkovic appeared in the premises of the Ministry of Croatian Veterans. He burst in with four bombs threatening to blow up himself and everyone around him if his housing problem was not solved on the spot. It was pure luck that a kilogramme and a half of trotyl planted under a garbage container in front of the Zagreb City Government did not kill any innocent passers-by. However, it would be silly and could easily prove lethal to hope that the luck will remain on the side of peaceful citizens and not lunatics armed with dynamite and bombs.

At this moment there is no doubt that a series of explosions in the capital of Croatia is a result of organised terrorist activity of a raging group which is unable to accept the fact that Franjo Tudjman is dead and that the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has lost power. Under a pretext of defending the dignity of the homeland war, that social group has launched a broad and well-organised action of putting the fear of God into citizens of Croatia and current authorities. Leaders of this enraged group and inspirers of terrorist bomb attacks can be found in the Command for the Defence of the Dignity of Homeland War. These are among twelve retired generals of the Croatian Army who had been planning a coup d'etat and a dozen of demoted spies who are freely walking the streets of Zagreb making plans how to topple the "red regime". Finally, they can be found among members of the Herzegovinian military junta which is trying to carry out its armed revolution in Zagreb, the city which has produced that same military junta and which is today the headquarters of political-financial sponsors of Herzegovinian secessionism and for which Croatia might have to pay dearly.

The only motive for bombing attacks of patriotic terrorists can be to instill fear and create chaos in Croatia. There is no doubt that they will start killing people once it becomes impossible to arouse fear and cause chaos by blowing up monuments and cars. "This is obviously a planned system and it is easy to determine where does it come from", said Dr Drazen Lalic and added: "The context is very important, i.e. the fact that the bomb went off in front of the City Hall, in which the power is in the hands of SDP, was a symbol same as Mirogoj was a symbol because the tomb there symbolises a specific political option which today's Social-Democrats are upholding. Next, local elections are to be held in two-months time at which the current authorities are expected to confirm their supremacy. That is why the intention is to create an atmosphere of fear and panic with these systematically planned terrorist actions so as to attain specific political goals or group goals which cannot be fulfilled in a democratic way nor through political struggle".

In contrast to Professor Lalic, who has surgically detected the people who had possibly ordered and motives of the latest in a series of terrorist acts in Zagreb, representatives of the authorities did not go further than the usual condemnations of terrorism as such. Prime Minister Ivica Racan immediately stated that he expected urgent discovery of perpetrators, Chief of Police Ranko Ostojic said that the police would do everything to prevent such incidents from happening again in future, while Minister of the Interior Sime Lucin promised a reward of 100 thousand kunas for any information leading to the person who had planted trotyl under the container in front of the City Hall.

Here we come to the key issue: Racan's Government disregard of the manifestations of right extremism and evident political terrorism

• a relation that the Croatian authorities have taken from the first day of their term - can only result in the escalation of that same right extremism and political terrorism which - apart from Racan's indecision and constant calculations - is living on growing poverty that has stricken an increased number of Croatian citizens. The metastasising poverty is a perfect lever in the hands of prominent figures of the former regime - plunderers, thieves, drug dealers and war criminals everyone of them - who have for months been organising a touring circus all over this wretched country inciting the poor to take matters into their hands and settle accounts with the "Anti-Croatian gang" which is currently in power. In the Croatian case the "taking matters into one's own hands" implies using kilogrammes of explosives that would be planted into containers or under monuments just to show us that we have made a terrible mistake on January 3, 2000.

However, Ivica Racan and his team are observing this peacefully doing nothing to convince us that we have not made a mistake. Namely, the Croatian police did not succeed in capturing perpetrators of any of the last year's grave crimes committed with explosives. They have no idea who has planted a bomb that killed Milan Levar, the Hague witness in Gospic, they do not have a clue who tried to shoot the renown lawyer Srdjo Jaksic in Dubrovnik, they know nothing about bomb-planters at the Mirogoj Tomb to National Heroes, and in all likelihood will never find out who had planted that trotyl which demolished some ten cars in front of the Zagreb City Hall. It somehow seems that these authorities are trying to minimise these outbursts of extremism and terrorism and sweep them under the carpet not realising that by ignoring the metastasising rightism in Croats they could provoke possible rivers of blood that might flood this country. However, would it take blood to make Ivica Racan finally come to his senses and give up the policy of reconciliation with people who treat dynamite as a legitimate means of political struggle?

Ivica Djikic

(AIM)