BRINGING THE POSAVINA IN ORDER

People in Order

AIM, ZAGREB, December 2, 1995

Upon his return from Dayton Franjo Tudjman proclaimed himself the victor of the war and the negotiations themselves, but was met with the dissatisfaction of the population of the Dubrovnik region, refugees and exiles from Baranja and eastern Slavonia, and most of all of the Croats from Bosnian Posavina (valley of the river Sava). The latter think that they were "betrayed" in Ohio as their houses and estates were left in the territory of the Serbian "entity" in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the Dayton Agreement in principle allows for the return of people to regions under foreign flags, it is clear that the logic already deeply rooted in the ex-Yugoslav lands has silently won - if you own the land you own the people.

The untenability of that logic is all the greater because it has been espoused not only by political elites but it has also been embraced by the broad population strata. So, just like the Knin Serbs before they were forced to an exodus from their ancestral homeland imagined that particular area to be exclusively theirs, so did the Posavina inhabitants before they lost their rich and fertile fields harboured the illusion that they belonged solely or for the most part to them (even though they accounted for only a negligible majority in Posavina both in respect of the Moslems and the Serbs). This was all the more obvious because among the Posavina Croats Tudjman's HDZ (Croat Democratic Union) enjoyed the undivided sympathies of the population (by their own admission 98 percent voted for this party at the recent elections) and their representatives don't even see fit to hide the fact that they had been apprised of the details of the super secret Boban - Karadzic negotiations in Graz, where territories were distributed following the above described logic.

So, evidently, the Posavina people "awoke" only when they realized that the ethnic stick also had another end, and that the one brandishing it may well get the thick end of it. But by then it had been too late and when, somehow when they by mass demonstration forced Tudjman to call a press conference, he turned a deaf ear to their demands. He refuted accusations that he had surrendered Posavina over to the Serbs under some secret deal in which the sides had agreed that the Croatian units would be withdrawn from that area (an official investigation was instituted in this respect at a certain point in the past but its results were never disclosed). To be more convincing, Tudjman also disclosed a number of indiscretions which could have given him a serious headache only up to a few months ago. He said that already in the fall of 1992, south of the Sava river - in the area stretching from Derventa to Bosanski Brod - a number of the brigades of the regular Croatian Army had been deployed.

They had to withdraw most of all on account of the superiority of the adversary, and because of the danger of the shelling and bombing of cities in Croatia escalating (with the greatest danger being that of possible attacks on the petro-chemical plant in Kutina). In all fairness some left their positions of their own will, but mostly those who were the very ones to protest in the streets of Zagreb recently - was the accusation Tudjman levelled against his critics. Thus, Tudjman repaid in kind to the gauntlet the Posavina people threw into his face, impressing upon them he would not even try to arrive at a meeting of minds with his until yesterday fervid followers. His incalcitrance became all the greater after the Posavina people publicly declared while demonstrating in front of the Assembly building that henceforth they would be supporting the opposition, whose leaders they welcomed with enthusiasm, while showering HDZ representatives with the most vituperative of language ("traitors", "Chetniks", "the red gang", etc.)

This shift of hard core HDZ supporters to the enemy camp occurred at a time when relations between Tudjman and the opposition were at their lowest, after the opposition had won an overwhelming victory at the local elections in Zagreb and the ruling party refused to surrender power over to a coalition of opposition parties. Tudjman "explained" this refusal saying that he could not allow "the creation of an opposition situation" in the capital, it being evident that he regards the metropolis as something "substantially" HDZ's, something that not even elections can assign over to the opposition. This needs to be particularly stressed because obviously Tudjman views gestures of solidarity with the Posavina people in a similar fashion, i.e. as interference in something which is none of its business and a subject on which it is not entitled to say anything.

In order to impress this fact even stronger Tudjman inadvertently blurted out another secret. He said that while he had been busy laying the foundations of Croatia in "her historic and ethnic boundaries" the opposition did not even have the courage to think about it. This is in fact true, and if Tudjman wanted to accuse the opposition of stealing his ideas one cannot say that he is not right. Now it is quite another matter that the Croatian President, by force of habit, thereby revealed that from the very outset of the Yugoslav crisis he had in mind the dismantlement of the former state, but not along the AVNOJ but rather some other boundaries, judging by all appearences, precisely those drawn in recent months by advancing Croatian units, i.e. withdrawing Serb units. As the Yugoslav war crisis has not as yet seen it peaceful denouement, theoretically one could predict that because of this admission on Tudjman's part Croatia could end up with less than it had bargained for.

However, it seems that the end of the peace process requires the resolving of just one of the outstanding questions, the succession of the former state, whereas all the rest is finished business. This includes a map of ethnic boundaries drawn up in the past several months which were negotiated on in Dayton using the standard diplomatic meta-language, which is not hard to translate. Although, namely, the Dayton Agreement guarantees all refugees and exiled people return to their homes, obviously massive relocatinos of people have been treated as a realistic "fact of life" and have become an unwritten component of "pax americana".

This stems also from Tudjman's assurances given to the people of Posavina that when he demanded in Dayton for a larger part of Posavina to be given to the Croats after all, he was given the reply that in that case Zagreb would have to make it possible for the Serbs who are now refugees in Posavina and eastern Slavonia to return back to Knin, Benkovac, Glina, Grahovo, Glamoc, Kupres. In other words they told him that if he did not "make waves" about Posavina, he could keep his ethnically cleansed Croatia, which he translated for the benefit of the Posavina people to mean that the surrendering of Posavina is the price to be paid for Croatia to restore its internationally recognized borders and, in fact, extend beyond them, into, in all fairness, incomplete, "its historic and ethnic boundaries". So if they stubbornly stuck to their demands, they could call in question the vital interests of the nation as a whole, including its very survival.

This has placed insurmountable hurdles before the people of Posavina, which they physically experienced as it were, when they headed for the Assembly building in protest, and were met there by a strong police force, some of which were not loath at all to use their nightsticks. In fact this is not the first time for a Croatian nightstick to whack a Croatian shoulder - not so long ago the same police detachment "Alfa" were "roughing it up" on punkers in Samobor - but it was the first time that the champions of the national idea were reining in their own army, showing the first signs of disenchantment, indecision and even anarchy, in such a way.

MARINKO CULIC