THE RETURN OF THE SERBIAN QUESTION TO CROATIA
AIM, ZAGREB, May 25, 1997
"The Serbs are coming back home" - was the headline of a text recently published in the Croatian weekly "Nacional". Indeed, after sporadic individual return of the Serbs who had fled Croatia during operation "Storm" - until recently the Croatian government allowed their return on exclusively humanitarian basis for family reunion purposes - something new has started to happen these days. Namely, the Serbs are coming back to the former Krajina in somewhat greater numbers. Thus, in an organized action 500 refugees from the FRY, as well as those who were located in Eastern Slavonia, have returned with their tractors and other property to the village of Krbavica in the commune of Korenica. In that same way, some twenty people have returned to Nebljuse, near Donji Lapac, and a smaller number to Dobro Selo in that commune. According to humanitarian organizations, as much as two thousand people have returned to Knin: activists of organizations for the protection of human rights even mention a return "boom".
If judging by only numbers and this sample it could be said that the process of return is progressing successfully. In any case, the situation is better than in Bosnia, but neither is it possible to judge the return on the basis of figures nor are these places representative samples when it comes to the policy of the Croatian government. It could be rather said that a larger-scale return is the result of unprecedented pressure of the West - of the American Government in the first place - exerted on the Croatian authorities. At his most recent press conference held after the violence committed in Kostajnica, the US Ambassador, Peter Galbraith said that Croatia would remain outside all Western integrations - he mentioned NATO, Partnership for Peace and European Union - if it did not permit those Serbs who want to, to return from FRY. "The Croatian government must guarantee to the Serbs who are returning to their places of previous residence the same security as that guaranteed to its other citizens", added Galbraith. The extension of the UNTAES mandate will depend on the quality of that process. Galbraith who for, already a year, has been reading the riot act in Croatia left, right and center has also made financial assistance to Zagreb conditional on its willingness to cooperate in the process of return. However, this time the demand concerns the return of the Serbs and not cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, as before.
In view of the increasingly frequent and unusually open messages of the high American government officials which are all of the same style - Galbraith had only repeated the stands of the American Secretary of State Madleine Albright - it can be concluded that the American policy towards Croatia has taken quite a different course. Croatia has been openly taken to task since, judging by all, the American officials assumed that Croatia - as a state being most interested in formally joining the West - should demonstrate to the greatest extent possible that it truly belonged to that same West. Those better versed in the nuances of the American policy think that this is not a strategic change of course and that Croatia will find it hard to continue to dodge the obligations it has undertaken.
The more so as the change of atmosphere in Croatia - according to the system of connected vessels - would most probably influence political trends in the neighbouring countries, primarily Bosnia and Herzegovina. If it continues to further tolerate terrorist incidents that would consequently bring Croatia into an even more open conflict with the States. Consequently, Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, President of the Croatian Helsinki Committee stated that some 100 thousand Serbs would return to Croatia, and perhaps all who want to, and that this objective the American policy will not push to the background, because the achievement of a stable and long-lasting peace in the region crucially depends on it.
Still, situation on the ground is far from good. The incidents are too many to be considered as spontaneous events, so that a part of the problem is probably caused by wilful behaviour of individual representatives of the authorities. A visit of returnees to Otocac, Lapac, Gospic, Vrhovine, Udbine and Korenica give quite a different picture from the one that can be gained on the basis of only figures. A much stronger impression than promising statements of Mate Granic, Jure Radic or Ivica Kostovic is made on the returning Serbs by frequent mine explosions which, according to the customary police formulations, are always planted by "unknown perpetrators". During the last month in the south of Lika alone five people have stepped on mines: one case was fatal, two injured are still fighting for their life, while two men have sustained serious injuries, but are off the critical list. A nurse from Zadar, who went to see her summer cottage in the Lika village of Medak, found a mine planted under her pillow. It blew her insides to pieces.
The explosion of every planted mine has multiple reverberations. On the one hand it causes panic in its immediate surroundings, and on the other it sounds as a clear signal to all those Serbs who are located in the FR Yugoslavia and all along the Croatian Danube-valley, that they are not wanted. For example, only in the village of Josani, near Udbine, two mines have exploded last month seriously injuring some returnees. Together with constant threats of the Bosnian Croats who have settled there, this had for a result the return of an extremely small number of people. As much as 60 families from Knin are unable to return to their houses, as well as the majority of returnees to other places.
Six families which returned to Kistanje - populated today by Croats from Janjevo in Kosovo - had to seek alternative accommodation, although their houses were vacant. As a rule, the Serbs cannot get employment in places from which they had fled. They live on humanitarian aid, agriculture and family "subsidies". In Vojnic individual returnees are welcomed by the graffiti: "Serbs start packing", "You are finished", etc. In Korenica, probably with the knowledge, if not in the organization, of the local authorities, a welcome for the returnees similar to that staged in Kostajnica was being prepared, but the idea had been abandoned, at least for the time being. Two returnees were beaten up in Plaski. In Donja Velenja two families were attacked. After they have moved to their neighbours, their property was plundered. A whole house (naturally, a pre-fabricated one) belonging to a woman-returnee from Slunj, was taken away. Returnees to Donji Lapac were sent to villages ten and more kilometers away, and the Government quite seriously considered the idea of accommodating the returnees in collective centers which could be instantly named - camps.
Milan Djukic, the SNS President, directly accused the Croatian state top ranks of these acts. "Croatia is a state which has strategically specified ways for the eradication of the Serbs", claims Djukic. "The case of Hrvatska Kostajnica is the last one in a series of confirmations that the instructions about the behaviour towards the Serbian people went all the way from the Presidential Palace, through the state top down to the local level". Indeed, even the legislation has been put in the function of preventing the return. According to Albert Kralj, President of the Executive Board of the Group "Homecomings", "at least ten laws are in force in Croatia which prevent the return by the method of colonisation. Some of them even directly force people into becoming thieves! For example, the Law on the Temporary Management of Property stipulates: an exile or a refugee who refuses to accept to temporarily use a flat or a house in the liberated area will have his status of a refugee or an exile terminated. In other words, if you refuse to steal the offered Serbian property, you lose all your rights".
In addition, the return to certain areas is absolutely impossible: the number of returnees to Banija, Kordun and the coast (Benkovac and Obrovac) is negligible. If the age structure of Serbs is added to this - data for the Lika region are probably representative for the whole of Krajina - it turns out that the Serbs will very soon disappear from these areas. Namely, the Serbs who stayed in Lika during the "Storm" were 66 years old, on average. The average age of returnees is 59 years and of the newly settled Croats 32 years. It should also be mentioned that the plunder of the former Serbian property which the state put under its control according to a special law, has been going on, without interruptions, since the time of the operation "Storm" until today - only the intensity has fallen as the most valuable things have already changed hands. Today stolen are roofs from houses, installations, remaining furniture, fruit, etc. The police does not react even in cases of murder or mining, and robbery has become commonplace.
Will anything change? According to the alleged statement of General Klein - which he did not deny when directly asked by a journalist - it was agreed that the number of Serbian returnees would reach the level of 5-7 percent of the Croatian population, although they made 12 percent before the war. That would mean that some 100-190 thousand of them would return to Croatia. Until now Croatia accepted even smaller numbers of returnees with difficulty. However, the pressure in constant: on Friday, May 23, President Tudjman received Ambassadors of the Contact Group countries who directly accused Croatia of supporting "organized crime" against the Serbian returnees and on that occasion presented a very harsh demarche which in the relations between Croatia and the West represents an unprecedented conflict.
According to some interpretations, in this way the Contact Group has actually helped Tudjman for whom the intensive pressure from the West will provide additional arguments in breaking the resistance of lower state officials who are obstructing the return of the Serbs. Naturally, this thesis holds water only under the assumption that the "organized crime" is not encouraged from the very top of the state leadership, which should not be ruled out. There remains to be seen whether Croatia will radically change its hitherto policy or - aiming at ethnically clean state - run the risk of gaining the reputation the Republic of South Africa once had.
BORIS RASETA