COEXISTENCE IN AN INCUBATOR

AIM Zagreb, 23 November, 1997

"We are all taken by surprise and quite concerned because of these developments, because they do not conform with our expectations and global hopes, or rather wishes to make the process of reconciliation proceed at a faster rate". That is how the latest developments in UNTAES region are assessed by Milos Vojnovic, president of the Joint Council of Municipalities, who is along with Vojislav Stanimirovic nowadays the most influential Serb politician in Croatian part of the Danube basin (Podunavlje). Nervousness which was felt on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the fall of Vukovar and which culminated by the boycott of school, a series of explosions and dissemination of leaflets with the message to the local population that 18 November would mark the beginning of an action of "silent, slow killing" somewhat diminished in the past few days. However, the circumstances are still far from being normal, least of all in view of the fact that only about fifty days are left until the final expiry of the mandate of UN peace forces. The question what will happen after 15 January when William Walker, transitional administrator of UNTAES will hand over the region of eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Srijem over to the Croatian authorities is present in every conversation and it is absolutely a "question of all questions". Indeed, it does not concern only the Serb population, although their fears are most pronounced.

Apparently, everything is proceeding as planned in Podunavlje. The most important thing for the Croatian party at this moment is that the mandate of UNTAES ends on 15 January, and from the technical point of view, there is no obstacle for that wish to come true. The region can be entered quite freely, Croatian license plates on cars - after much caution and hesitation - were accepted by the local Serbs, so that now they too, whenever they wish, can visit the rest of Croatia. The most important state services have been reintegrated; local self-administration operates to the extent possible in the available time; the Yugoslav dinar has almost entirely disappeared from circulation; reconstruction proceeds at the rate which depends on the financial inflow from the world and Croatia; a part of the Serbs who had fled after operations "Flash" and "Storm" returned to their previous homes and emptied the houses of banished Croats. The government adopted a program of establishing inter-ethnic confidence, having formulated its text according to the taste of the international community; Croatian officials elected in spring elections are taking over their posts in Podunavlje; the transitional police (which should soon put on Croatian uniforms) is quite reliably carrying out its duties; Croatian products are predominant in the shops. Everything seems normal and close to the end.

But, the parallel life in Vukovar and most of Podunavlje irresistably reminds of the situation Serbia has in Kosovo, although perhaps not to such an extent and so drastically evident. If a reconstructed building, which according to the idea of the European Union - the financier of this experimental balloon which was intended to show that after all it was possible to live together in Vukovar - could be an indicator of the general situation and disposition, then integration could be talked about only as a technical job in which the form has completely suppressed the contents. This nicely packed box covered with labels of multiethnicity, multiculturality, tolerance and coexistence, painfully echoes because it is completely hollow and empty inside. Everything went well as long as it remained within limits of protocol: European Union commissioner Van der Broek, accompanied by Croatian minister of reconstruction Jure Radic and transitional administrator Walker, proudly handed over the 71 apartments in the reconstructed skyscraper "Danube 2" towards the end of October. The idea was that the same people who had lived there before the war move in again. And both Croats and Serbs lived there, in the ratio of almost fifty-fifty. But, after almost a month which has elapsed since, the building is still gaping empty: only four families have moved in. As if by agreement: two of them are Croat and two are Serb. And they are probably sorry that they have done so, because they are constantly disturbed by journalists who are soliciting them to find out whether the Croats and the Serbs can live together again under the same roof.

Serb family Petrovic and the first Croat who has returned to Vukovar - seventy-seven-year old Ivan Frank - tenants of the eleven-storey high "Danube 2" should be the proof that it is possible. They knew each other before the war, they used to live on the same floor like now, next door to each other. In the cellar of the reconstructed building, they survived together the agony of Vukovar, until the Yugoslav people's army (JNA) entered the city accompanied by all kinds of paramilitary groups. Their joint life of peaceful neighbours ended at that point. Petrovics went for some time to Becej, to live with their relatives. Contrary to Frank who is a Croat, the Serb family was privileged at the time - they did not have to go to the reception camp in Sremska Mitrovica, and then to jail in Nis, for night interrogations and verification. Although Frank was seventy at the time, it took him almost a month to get back to Croatia in the first exchange of prisoners. Petrovics returned to Vukovar after a month, while Frank was spending lonely days in banishment in Starigrad on the island of Hvar. His wife was taken by destiny to the other end of the planet - to Australia with her relatives. She is afraid to return to Vukovar, and Frank believes that seventy seven is not the right age for a man to change the continent and try to build a new life for himself.

    Now they live in the same building again, in

apartments in which they used to live, next door to each other. They greet each other and believe that they are not guilty for the war and everything they experienced afterwards. They have no problems with each other, they are elderly people, they know each other for a long time, and they have never done anything bad to each other. But they are an exception which proves the bitter rule that joint life will be difficult, and it is a question whether it is possible. The Croats, former inhabitants of the building "Danube 2" are making enquiries how they can buy the apartments and resell them immediately afterwards. Some of the Serbs who are also former tenants of this building, scattered all around Vukovar in someone else's homes, also find it difficult to make up their minds to return to the skyscraper on the bank of the Danube. Their pretext is that the elevator does not work, that heating has not been turned on yet (and in fact it was on 18 November, on the 6th anniversary of the fall of the city), that there is still a lot to repair in the apartments. Of course, the reason is quite different - both the Croats and the Serbs are afraid of the return of the others.

The Croatian authorities are consoled by the fact that return of the Croats to Vukovar and Podunavlje will begin in spring. Reasons presented by the authorities are not deprived of logic altogether: children of majority of banished persons have started school, and there are no jobs for their parents. Besides, it is wintertime and nights are long, and nobody in Vukovar likes night. Just as nobody likes to be the first to return to this Hiroshima where the buildings with reconstructed fronts and new glass on their windows seem unnatural and unreal. But Croatian authorities, as well as banished persons to whom it had always made promises in this sense, are hoping that everything will be different when Croatian police comes there in uniforms with Croatian state insignia. And that is exactly what the Serbs are nowadays fearing.

Head of the OSCE monitoring mission, Tim Guldimann, quite explicitly said last week in Vukovar that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will not take over the rule from UNTAES. It will be the job of the Croatian state, OSCE will just monitor the process. But, the monitoring mission of the OSCE, which has in Vukovar one of its four seats in Croatia, can already see what it is like. Sixty seven empty apartments in the eleven-storey building called "Danube 2" clearly illustrates the circumstances in Vukovar. This sample of multi-ethnic life created in a laboratory, has proved to be a fragile form of life which cannot survive even in an incubator, under a glass bell and under surveillance of the international community. What it will be like when that artificial climate disappears, it is not especially hard to imagine.

DRAGO HEDL