SLAVONIA - 600 HOUSES WAITING FOR INHABITANTS

AIM, ZAGREB, September 23,1997

In a letter Gerard Fischer, the UNTAES Civil Administrator, recently sent to the Croatian Government, meticulously listing measures to be taken in order for a process of peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia to break the stalemate, there is one thing which the Croatian authorities are keeping under wraps. A hint relating to this problem says that the present pace of the return of Serbs should be maintained, but that the Croatian refugees should also be encouraged to return to Podunavlje on the basis of a mechanism established by the Joint Working Group.

And while one hundred Serbs a week return to places in which they lived before the "Flash" or "Storm", the return of the Croats is not nearly proceeding with the agreed pace. Not a single state-controlled media published the fact that at this moment, on the UNTAES area - in once ethnically mixed environments - there are 600 vacant houses waiting for their one-time inhabitants. If an average Croatian family has four members, that means that almost 2,500 people could return to Podunavlje this instant.

However, apart from villages which were before the war inhabited by almost exclusively Croatian population (Podgradje, Lipovac, Nijemci, Antunovac), practically no one has returned to Podunavlje. Recently, under a large title over the entire page the Zagreb "Vijesnik" wrote about the return of one Croat to Vukovar, but did not explain why others were not following his suit. Mato Simic, president of the Association of Refugees of Croatia, now a delegate to the Parliament, a person who this spring appeared each week in all prime time TV shows and on the entire pages of the regime papers criticizing the "inefficiency of UNTAES" which was "hampering the return of refugees" disappeared all of a sudden, practically retiring into anonymity. Earlier frequent protests of refugees who were, by special buses, taken from refugee camps to various protest rallies, now have no one to organize them and the priority of their return seems to have disappeared from the political vocabulary of the Croatian officials.

For what reason has one of the constant subjects of the Croatian policy - the return of refugees to their places of origin - suddenly been taken off the priority list? When at the height of his presidential campaign President Tudjman arrived to Vukovar on a "train of return" everything had been prearranged with the (pre-election) objective of showing him as the man - who in accordance with his earlier promises - who is bringing Croatia back to Vukovar. However, as "Vijesnik" recently noticed, since then only one Croat returned to Vukovar. And not only that: now UNTAES is the one pressing for the return of the Croats, because of a marked "imbalance" in the process of a two-way return. The Serbs are leaving the (Croatian) houses, but the Croats are surely taking their time.

Although it is hard to speak in percentages, during six years of exile a significant number of refugees has managed quite well in their new environments. At one time the best cars in Zagreb had Vukovar registration plates, same as a large number of high class Mercedeses, BMWs and Audis in Osijek had "VU" and "BM" plates. Some refugees started their business in new surroundings, children have been sent to schools, they have moved into flats and houses of exiled Serbs, their wives found jobs. In short, they have started a new life and in six years of their exile have put down deep roots in these new places, building for themselves living standards which they never had before. Some officials of the Association of Refugees of Croatia openly stated that they had no intention of returning to their previous places of residence: they do not want to leave the flats they have "liberated", jobs they could only dream about, they do not want to take their children out of schools, as - if they returned to Baranja or Vukovar - they would have to travel by trains or intercity buses to secondary schools, instead by tram.

And while it could have been supposed that those who found a solution for themselves, who are only a tip of the iceberg in the army of refugees, will no longer long to return to their razed villages, what about those who still live in refugee camps or in all sorts of temporary accommodation? What about that part of refugees who were previously an excellent material for manipulation and demonstration of the refugees' dissatisfaction, who protested in front of the UNTAES control points, blocking their vehicles and showing at every step the dissatisfaction with their slackness and inefficiency.

During a lecture in Osijek, which was thematically much broader that the problem of refugees and their life in exile, Jacques Paul Klein, until recently the Transitional Administrator of UNTAES, while speaking of post-communist Europe, had to listen to a flood of accusations at his expense. Although the lecture was strictly academic (in addition to being a general of the American Army, Klein is a historian) for professors and students of the Osijek University, someone brought the most radical exiles on purpose with the objective of provoking the Transitional Administrator.

The reason why even refugees who live in cramped and unfit settlements and improvised shelters are not returning to Podunavlje should be looked for on several levels. First, for years they were being persuaded that they shall return to their homes in a column headed by units of the Croatian army and the police. It is sufficient to recall "hot slogans" shouted from rostrums of various refugee rallies. Also, mention should also be made of the raving media propaganda, especially on TV (into which the still topical TV Album, which biassedly re-runs the bloody film of war sufferings, surely fits), used for years to explain to people that there could never be any joint life with the Serbs.

Many Croatian politicians have given their contribution to this in addressing the refugees, pushing to the margins those voices who were in favour of pardoning all those who did not stain their hands with blood, pleading for a life in peace, side by side. Finally, one should be realistic and mention the fear as a deterrent in their return to once mixed communities in which they had lived before the war. That fear is not only a consequence of the propaganda and manipulations of the media; it is real inasmuch as the Croat, who approves of the maltreatment of the Serbs who are returning to their previous places of residence (the recent example of Hrvatska Kostajnica), privately wonders whether the same fate is in store for him upon his return to Vukovar.

All the above-mentioned is only a consequence of a two-sided Croatian policy vis-a-vis Podunavlje, which in effect, at least at the beginning of the story about peaceful reintegration, always implied a possibility of military option. The problem was created when such a policy ran into the resoluteness of a Klein who - realizing who he was dealing with - found right methods to actually carry out in practice what everyone doubted - that process called peaceful reintegration. Now, when things have gone too far in that direction and when it is truly unthinkable that Croatia could enter Podunavlje with its military, now that all promises should be fulfilled and both the people from that territory as well as the state territory itself reintegrated, the expected happened. The refugees simply do not want to go back to the places they lived in before.

In the end something that no one expected could happen to Croatia. After some grumbling, it will, with relief, accept the increasingly loud demands of the international community for the extension of the mandate of the peace forces in the Danube river valley after January

1. If it fails to find a way to encourage exiles to return, it will be secretly happy to have the UNTAES still present as that will give it time to find a formula for their return.

DRAGO HEDL